November 25, 2023

November 25, 2023 By
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Chapter 13 (pp. 113-121) of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised second edition: 17 August 2013; slightly revised again in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version). Anyone who reads this book should first read the following three introductory articles, in order to fully understand the definitions and sociological categories I am employing:

Introduction (on the book page)

Definitions: Radical Catholic Reactionaries, Mainstream “Traditionalists,” and Supposed “Neo-Catholics” [revised 8-6-13]

Radical Catholic Reactionaries: What They Are Not [9-28-21]

If you’re still confused and unclear as to my meanings and intent after that, read one or more of these articles:

Rationales for My Self-Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionaries” [8-6-13]

My Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionary”: Clarifications [10-5-17]

Clarifying My Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionary” [4-3-20]

This book is modeled after the method and structure of the French mathematician and Catholic apologist Blaise Pascal’s classic, Pensées (“thoughts”). Catholic apologist and philosopher Peter Kreeft described this masterpiece as “raw pearls” and “more like ‘sayings’ than a book . . . ‘Sayings’ reflect and approximate the higher, the mode of Christ and Socrates and Buddha. That’s why Socrates is the greatest philosopher, according to St. Thomas (S.T. III, 42, 4).”

I am not intending to compare myself or my own “thoughts” or their cogency or import in any way, shape, or form, to those of Pascal, let alone to Socrates or our Lord Jesus! I am merely utilizing the unconventional structure of the Pensées, which  harmonizes well, I believe, with the approach that I have taken with regard to the present subject. I have sought to analyze (minus proper names, a la Trent) the premises, presuppositions, logical and ecclesiological “bottom lines” and (in a word), the spirit of a false and divisive radical Catholic reactionary strain of thought held by a distinctive sociological sub-group of Catholics.

*****

  1. Radical Catholic reactionaries claim that in order to be faithful and consistent with pre-Vatican II Church teaching, it is necessary to “carefully nuance” loyalty to post-conciliar popes and Church teaching. In other words, one must play a game of equivocation and rationalizing (precisely the accusation they make regarding both “conservatives” and “modernists”). Needless to say, this alleged dramatic contradiction between the popes before 1958 and those after is entirely mythical, and contrary to the faith of an orthodox Catholic.
  1. Yet reactionaries apparently think little of disobeying papal injunctions that they dislike. Their difficulties thus extend a bit beyond merely Vatican II and its historical aftermath. Internal submission to (even sub-infallible) papal and conciliar teaching is certainly a pre-conciliar requirement for an obedient Catholic, but reactionaries aren’t widely observed to be suffering terrible pangs of conscience over their disobedience to that quite traditional and formerly assumed Catholic distinctive.
  1. How is such a bleak (and false) view not defectibility? Three straight heretic popes?!! Why even have a pope at all if such a radical departure could occur? Why be a Catholic at all, if this is what one believes? What becomes of the faith in God’s guidance of His Church? Reactionaries should immediately become Protestants, where at least they wouldn’t have to torture logic and the received understanding of the Catholic faith, in order to maintain the pretense of “obedience” when wanton disobedience is plainly manifest. A high price to pay for one’s own prejudices, limited understandings, and private judgment . . .
  1. Rather than simply obey the pope and council, and trust that God understands and controls things that may be beyond us, some reactionaries would rather throw out the council and disobey the pope, considering him a heretic. How is this at all distinguishable from Martin Luther’s defiant stance at the Diet of Worms in 1521? In fact, it is worse, as papal and conciliar infallibility are both far more defined now than in his day.
  1. Venerable Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical, Humani Generis (12 August 1950), wrote about the authority of papal encyclicals (which reactionaries seem to have forgotten when it comes to Pope St. John Paul II):

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: “He who heareth you, heareth me”;[3] and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the same Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. (20)

Note that submission is not confined to ex cathedra statements — the authoritative “world” which reactionaries seem to wish to reside in almost exclusively. Ven. Pope Pius XII then touches upon development of doctrine and Church authority. This has  relevance to the current dispute over Vatican II and supposedly “novel” doctrines:

. . . together with the sources of positive theology God has given to His Church a living Teaching Authority to elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of faith only obscurely and implicitly. This deposit of faith our Divine Redeemer has given for authentic interpretation not to each of the faithful, not even to theologians, but only to the Teaching Authority of the Church . . . (21)

In other words, the pope urges us to let the magisterium determine such weighty matters, not “each of the faithful,” as in reactionaryism and sola Scriptura Protestantism.

  1. Reactionaries often falsely accuse so-called “conservative Catholics” of denying the fact that a pope can be rebuked. This is certainly untrue in my case, as I have written elsewhere:

Pope John XXII was soundly and successfully rebuked by the masses when he temporarily espoused belief in a false doctrine. St. Catherine of Siena, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and St. Francis of Assisi rebuked popes, and their advice was respected and heeded (St. Francis wasn’t ordained). These saints were the most revered Catholics of their time (one might think of Mother Teresa in our time). I’m sure there were also many instances of morally inferior popes (many during the Renaissance) being soundly rebuked by holy priests and laymen. This is nothing novel      whatsoever in Catholic ecclesiology. No one knows better than Catholics the distinction between the nobility of an office and (too often) the sanctity of the person holding it at any given time. Of course, this has always been the case in the Church and amongst the Old Testament Jews (one need only recall Moses, David, Judas, and St. Peter himself).

  1. Sure, laymen can petition the pope and so forth, but reactionary aspirations are based on the false assumption and presumption that an ecumenical council could fail in its purpose in the first place. As that is not Catholic teaching, it is hardly a conceivable scenario. It is the pope’s job to correct councils, not ours. We possess no such authority. Pope St. Paul VI changed some things, and then ratified the council. Rome has spoken; case closed.
  1. The possibility of theoretical corrections of popes is not at issue. The real issue is when and how to do so (and the frequency of such momentous occasions), and whether the present situation is such an occasion, and, on the flip side, the routine obligation of Catholics to obey the pope and his decrees (and councils), whether infallible or ex cathedra or not — which spirit reactionaries show precious little indication of possessing.
  1. “Conservative” Catholics – so it is alleged — think popes and ecumenical councils are verbally inspired, and therefore above criticism. This is ludicrous. Only the Bible is verbally inspired, of course. Reactionaries often stoop to gross caricature of the orthodox Catholic viewpoint (which they call “conservative”). The obligation of the Catholic is to give religious submission of mind and will and interior assent to popes and ecumenical councils — even when sub-infallible, or infallible in the ordinary magisterium (as opposed to extraordinary or ex cathedra). This point is frequently ignored by reactionaries. Instead, they merely repeat the caricature of our true beliefs about Catholic authority, because it serves as a convenient polemical “club.”
  1. If Pope St. Paul VI was so weak and compromised with modernism, how, then, could he write the magnificent and heroic Humanae Vitae, against the majority advice of his own advisors, in direct defiance of the liberals? Nothing was ever so unfashionable as opposition to unrestrained sexual freedom, at that time. This heroic pope suffered “white martyrdom” if anyone ever did. And I happen to have personally known one of his close advisors (Servant of God Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J.), so I have a little bit of inside information about that, beyond mere outward speculation.
  1. Chapter III of the document on the papacy from Vatican I: On the Power and Nature of the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, just prior to the next chapter’s proclamations on infallibility itself, refers to a:

. . . sovereignty of ordinary power . . . to which all, of whatsoever rite and dignity, both pastors and faithful, both individually and collectively, are bound, by their duty of hierarchical   subordination and true obedience, to submit, not only in matters which belong to faith and morals, but also in those that appertain to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the world; so that the Church of Christ may be one flock under one supreme pastor, through the preservation of unity, both of communion and of profession of the same faith, with the Roman pontiff. This is the teaching of Catholic truth, from which no one can deviate without the loss of faith and of salvation.

Reactionaries are, therefore, fundamentally disobedient in their cavalier dismissal of the pope’s teachings — even when considered as technically on a sub-infallible level.

  1. The faithful Catholic accepts all that a council or pope of his Church teaches, short of the most outrageous and glaringly obvious error (for example, the error of Pope St. John XXII about the Beatific Vision, which he changed when near death).
  1. I think reactionaryism has a strong attitudinal element or tendency, akin to that found in other points of view, such as anti-Catholic Protestantism or “Catholic” theological liberalism. One can see no good in the pope, or no bad, or one can take a middle position (which I would call orthodoxy and being a faithful, obedient Catholic), where the pope’s words and actions are accorded the immense respect and reverence appropriate to his exalted office, but where aspects of prudence or particular errors might be pointed out. It seems that the reactionaries want to make out like those of us who disagree with them are ultramontanists who think the choice of socks the pope wears every day is an ex cathedra doctrine. It is not normative or appropriate for a Catholic to go on and on, railing against the pope. It’s usually bad form and highly presumptuous. There have been “bad popes,” of course, but recent ones are not among them.
  1. Yes, one can conceivably question the pope — especially his actions, yet it must be done only with overwhelming evidence that he is doing something completely contrary to Catholic doctrine and prior practice. It is not something that a non-theologian or non-priest should do nonchalantly and as a matter of course. To do so would smack far too much of the Protestant attitude of private judgment and lack of an authority structure.
  1. Any moderately informed Protestant knows that a Catholic ought to be obedient to the pope in all but the most extraordinary circumstances. That’s surely how I would have perceived the orthodox Catholic position, when I was still Protestant. I would have immediately determined that reactionaries were liberals or radically inconsistent Catholics.
  1. There is a world of difference between a St. Catherine of Siena or a St. Francis of Assisi rebuking a pope (or, say, Cardinal Ratzinger or St. Teresa of Calcutta, privately), and zealous, still wet behind the ears apologists and loudmouthed reactionary laymen doing so. One either immediately grasps this self-evident point or they do not. But it’s clear that — failing to grasp it — rational argument from within a Catholic framework is pretty much futile.
  1. It’s normal and ethical (and quite Catholic) to indignantly respond to the petulant, pompous, and presumptuous tone of so many reactionary statements about recent popes. If they can speak so cavalierly and arrogantly about popes (I had far more respect for popes as a Protestant than they do), then surely we can wax indignant at them doing so, without being “rude.” One is not awakened by a soft voice.
  1. Pope St. Leo the Great and Pope St. Gregory the Great reigned at a time when the Monophysite heresy was flourishing. Does that make them lousy popes too? When is there ever not heresy? Reactionaries retort that Pope St. Paul VI’s reign coincided with the beginning of modernism, or liberalism. That would hardly do, since modernism was written about in 1864, 1907, etc. Modernism essentially began with the so-called “Enlightenment,” if not the Protestant Revolution (actually, the Fall of Man, in a large sense).
  1. It would be beyond silly to cast the lion’s share of the blame for modernism on Pope St. Paul VI. The 1960s were merely the fruition of a long 200+ years trend, primarily due to the rapid breakdown of the larger culture. Pope Paul VI wouldn’t have been able to stop it any more than a twig could stop the water from a burst dam. Doctrinal chaos and upheaval to some extent always happens after ecumenical councils, anyway (as with, e.g., Nicaea and Arianism).
  1. Many orthodox Catholic observers think Pope St. Paul VI could have been more vigilant against the liberals. But that is a far cry from being one of the worst popes ever, as some reactionaries seem to think he was. The worst popes ever were whoring and living it up, not writing heroic encyclicals in direct confrontation with the overwhelming forces of secular culture. Even reactionaries admit that Humanae Vitae was great.
  1. Many reactionaries make their excoriating judgments of popes as if they had no more importance or gravity than reeling off a laundry or grocery list. Who are they to presume what they do? What are their exalted credentials, whereby they feel so free to sit and condemn entire papacies with one-sentence salvoes?
  1. Even if reactionaries are right about some particulars in their incessant criticisms of recent popes, they ought to express their opinion with the utmost respect and with fear and trembling, grieved that they are “compelled” to severely reprimand the Vicar of Christ. St. Paul showed more deference even towards the Jewish high priest than such people do to popes (Acts 23:1-5). After saying to Ananias “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall,” he stated in v. 5: “I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest; for it is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.'” Even immediately before His scathing rebuke of the Pharisees, Jesus told His followers to “practice and observe whatever they tell you” (Matthew 23:3). Why? Because the “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat . . .”  (23:2).  The pope occupies the Chair of Peter, established by our Lord Jesus Himself, and is the Supreme Head of the Church. Pope-bashing reactionaries must be willing to “practice and observe whatever they tell you” (including disciplinary proclamations, liturgical details, etc.). In any event, the popes certainly have as much authority as non-Christian scribes and Pharisees. We see both St. Paul and our Lord Jesus expressing the most vehement criticisms of appointed religious leaders, yet Paul showed quite considerable deference when he found out the office of the one he was criticizing, and Jesus commanded obedience to the very same people whose hypocrisy He excoriated. This is all consistent with the traditional, orthodox Catholic (and what is called by reactionaries the “neo-Catholic” or “conservative”) view.
  1. Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium, 25):

In matters of faith and morals . . . religious submission of will and mind must be shown in a special way to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking “ex cathedra.” That is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known chiefly either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.

  1. To submit an analogy: I, as a parent, can tell my son to not fornicate. That would be, in effect, an infallible statement, in terms of moral certainty. I could also forbid him to stay out till after, say, 11:00 PM. Obviously, the second is a much less certain proposition, in terms of right and wrong. But my son is bound to obey both “commands,” by the natural order of the authority of parents. Thus, I have exercised two very different levels of “infallibility,” yet both entail more or less absolute obedience, by the order of things — the way God set up the family and “chain of command.” That’s why this desire to have so many loopholes in conciliar and papal authority is a fundamentally liberal and dissenting outlook.
  1. We might ponder other examples of authority, such as the military. Does a private cavalierly disobey the orders of a captain, let alone a general? Of course he does not. Does a lowly trial lawyer disregard the orders of a judge, let alone the rulings of the Supreme Court of his state or the nation? No; or if he does, there is a penalty to pay. Even in a family, there is a clear God-ordained authority. Children obey their parents. They instinctively know this. Down deep, they want to do this (and they know that they need to). Just as the father is the head of the household, so the Holy Father is the head of the Church. This is all self-evident. People understand the basic concept of authority. Yet when it comes to the Catholic Church, which has always believed in a supreme teacher, the vicar of Christ, the head of the Church, upon whom rests the final appeal in Church matters in every sense, we have the curious and astonishing novelty of mere laymen (reactionaries) routinely questioning papal authority and running it down at every opportunity.

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Summary: Chapter 13 of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version).

November 24, 2023

November 24, 2023 By
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Chapter 12 (pp. 99-111) of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised second edition: 17 August 2013; slightly revised again in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version). Anyone who reads this book should first read the following three introductory articles, in order to fully understand the definitions and sociological categories I am employing:

Introduction (on the book page)

Definitions: Radical Catholic Reactionaries, Mainstream “Traditionalists,” and Supposed “Neo-Catholics” [revised 8-6-13]

Radical Catholic Reactionaries: What They Are Not [9-28-21]

If you’re still confused and unclear as to my meanings and intent after that, read one or more of these articles:

Rationales for My Self-Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionaries” [8-6-13]

My Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionary”: Clarifications [10-5-17]

Clarifying My Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionary” [4-3-20]

This book is modeled after the method and structure of the French mathematician and Catholic apologist Blaise Pascal’s classic, Pensées (“thoughts”). Catholic apologist and philosopher Peter Kreeft described this masterpiece as “raw pearls” and “more like ‘sayings’ than a book . . . ‘Sayings’ reflect and approximate the higher, the mode of Christ and Socrates and Buddha. That’s why Socrates is the greatest philosopher, according to St. Thomas (S.T. III, 42, 4).”

I am not intending to compare myself or my own “thoughts” or their cogency or import in any way, shape, or form, to those of Pascal, let alone to Socrates or our Lord Jesus! I am merely utilizing the unconventional structure of the Pensées, which  harmonizes well, I believe, with the approach that I have taken with regard to the present subject. I have sought to analyze (minus proper names, a la Trent) the premises, presuppositions, logical and ecclesiological “bottom lines” and (in a word), the spirit of a false and divisive radical Catholic reactionary strain of thought held by a distinctive sociological sub-group of Catholics.

*****

  1. Radical Catholic reactionaries believe that Vatican II was deliberately and perniciously ambiguous in its conscious teachings. Actual examples of the assumed devious and diabolical modus operandi are rarely given, so that the charge has little objective meaning. The proponent merely assumes what he is trying to prove, and tries to authoritatively and magisterially assert it, while not providing any “meat” or evidence to back up the ubiquitous charge. One tends to get comfortable and lax within one’s own self-contained worldview . . .
  1. Reactionaries think that Vatican II was merely a “pastoral” and not infallible ecumenical council; hence it can be selectively obeyed. But the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), states, in its article on “General Councils” (italics added):

All the arguments which go to prove the infallibility of the Church apply with their fullest force to the infallible authority of general councils in union with the pope. For conciliary decisions are the ripe fruit of the total life-energy of the teaching Church actuated and directed by the Holy Ghost. Such was the mind of the Apostles when, at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts, xv, 28), they put the seal of supreme authority on their decisions in attributing them to the joint action of the Spirit of God and of themselves: Visum est Spiritui sancto et nobis (It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us). This formula and the dogma it enshrines stand out brightly in the deposit of faith and have been carefully guarded throughout the many storms raised in councils by the play of the human element.

From the earliest times they who rejected the decisions of councils were themselves rejected by the Church. Emperor Constantine saw in the decrees of Nicaea “a Divine commandment” and Athanasius wrote to the bishops of Africa: “What God has spoken through the Council of Nicaea endureth for ever.” St. Ambrose (Ep. xxi) pronounces himself ready to die by the sword rather than give up the Nicene decrees, and Pope Leo the Great     expressly declares that “whoso resists the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon cannot be numbered among Catholics” (Ep. lxxviii, ad Leonem Augustum). In the same epistle he says that the decrees of Chalcedon were framed instruente Spiritu Sancto, i.e. under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.

How the same doctrine was embodied in many professions of faith may be seen in Denzinger’s (ed. Stahl) “Enchiridion symbolorum et definitionum”, under the heading (index) “Concilium generale representat ecclesiam universalem, eique absolute obediendum”      (General councils represent the universal Church and demand absolute obedience). The Scripture texts on which this unshaken belief is based are, among others: “But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth . . .” John xvi, 13) “Behold I am with you      [teaching] all days even to the consummation of the world” (Matt., xxviii, 20), “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it [i.e. the Church]” (Matt., xvi, 18).

Papal and conciliar infallibility are correlated but not identical. A council’s decrees approved by the pope are infallible by reason of that approbation, because the pope is infallible also extra concilium, without the support of a council. The infallibility proper to the pope is not, however, the only formal adequate ground of the council’s infallibility. The Divine constitution of the Church and the promises of Divine assistance made by her Founder, guarantee her inerrancy, in matters pertaining to faith and morals, independently of the pope’s infallibility: a fallible pope supporting, and supported by, a council, would  still pronounce infallible decisions.

This accounts for the fact that, before the Vatican decree concerning the supreme pontiff’s ex-cathedra judgments, Ecumenical councils were generally held to be infallible even by those who denied the papal infallibility; it also explains the concessions largely made to the opponents of the papal privilege that it is not necessarily implied in the      infallibility of councils, and the claims that it can be proved separately and independently on its proper merits. The infallibility of the council is intrinsic, i.e. springs from its nature. Christ promised to be in the midst of two or three of His disciples gathered together in His name; now an Ecumenical council is, in fact or in law, a gathering of all Christ’s co-workers for the salvation of man through true faith and holy conduct; He is therefore in their midst, fulfilling His promises and leading them into the truth for which they are striving. . . .

Some important consequences flow from these principles. Conciliar decrees approved by the pope have a double guarantee of infallibility: their own and that of the infallible pope. The council’s dignity is, therefore, not diminished, but increased, by the definition of papal infallibility, . . .

An opinion too absurd to require refutation pretends that only these latter canons (with the attached anathemas) contain the peremptory judgment of the council demanding unquestioned submission. Equally absurd is the opinion, sometimes recklessly advanced, that the Tridentine capita are no more than explanations of the canones, not proper definitions; the council itself, at the beginning and end of each chapter, declares them to contain the rule of faith.

Obedient Catholics (per the above pre-conciliar explanations) obey ecumenical councils and give them their inner assent and submission.

  1. We are informed that God did not prevent Vatican II from falling into the hands of evil schemers and heterodox conspirators, though only in the sense of ambiguity, not formal heresy. Reactionaries apparently believe that all previous councils were authoritative and binding, whereas Vatican II is a mess. What did God do, forget His promise, or go to sleep? We are to believe that all the other ecumenical councils somehow managed to escape this fate? Whatever happened to Christ’s maxim that “a house divided against itself cannot stand”? The whole scenario is completely absurd.
  1. I guess Holy Scripture also suffers from these same manifest deficiencies of “ambiguity.” How many falsehoods it has spawned! Look at Protestantism, the “Bible Only” version of Christianity, with all its rival schools of thought. Away with the Bible, then! After all, so many heretical cults have derived false doctrines from various “ambiguous” interpretations of the biblical texts. If it weren’t for the Bible, surely they wouldn’t even exist. Therefore, the Bible must have caused them. We need to get a pope to declare ex cathedra that the New Testament didn’t depart from previous Jewish Old Testament tradition, so as to alleviate the problem.
  1. As for Vatican II’s supposed “ambiguity,” it is ultimately irrelevant what theological commissions declare. The legitimate authority in these matters is the Holy Father, the pope. And Pope St. Paul VI, while vetoing certain things, did not veto the entire council or declare it “ambiguous.” “Rome has spoken . . . ” So what do reactionaries do now? Deny St. Paul VI’s divinely ordained authority as the head of an ecumenical council? Or deny that he was a valid pope?
  1. Christians and Bible scholars are still arguing about various biblical “difficulties.” That doesn’t mean that we adopt biblical errancy, merely because there are “problems” of interpretation and harmonization with other parts of Scripture. Likewise with Catholic ecumenical councils and prior Church tradition.
  1. No informed, orthodox Catholic I know will deny that the modernists had insidious designs, or at least dangerously false beliefs, sincerely held (heresy is always with us – and bishops and theologians are not immune to it). What we assert is that heresy can never subvert an ecumenical council, ratified by a pope. God simply won’t let that happen. This is a tenet of faith, and is part and parcel of Catholic ecclesiology.
  1. The “ambiguity” argument is exceedingly nebulous and subjective by its very nature. If one points out that such-and-such a doctrine can be shown to have an orthodox pedigree and consistent development, the reactionary replies that the conciliar conspirators placed ambiguous language in it, in order for it to be subverted later. In other words, their cynical interpretation is always the “winner” because they have the simplistic, sloganistic, and easy sleight-of-hand of “ambiguity” always ready and at their disposal. But the only reasonable way to determine orthodoxy is to simply look at the conciliar words (and those of previous councils) themselves (and strangely enough, these vocal critics rarely take the time to do). Actual words are objective tools, just as one engages in exegesis and cross-referencing when interpreting sacred Scripture.
  1. The reactionary often adopts a fortress mentality whereby any challenger to the self-proclaimed “orthodoxy” is automatically written off as a modernist, or modernist dupe or “useful idiot,” and patronized as a “conservative,” simply because we don’t play the game in this irrational, Alice in Wonderland fashion, where words — like a wax nose — can always be shaped according to the skeptical whims of the anti-conciliar party line.
  1. Nowhere does anyone show that the council was invalid; therefore, we are all bound to it. There is no middle, “ambiguous” position.
  1. Reactionaries will give heed to a mere theologian, when he contradicts what popes say about the authority of an ecumenical council. This is pure modernist methodology (inherited from Protestant notions of “authority”).
  1. The office of the papacy exists for a reason, and in God’s providence, Pope St. Paul VI presided over the ending of the council. Here is what he declared about its authority:

Apostolic Brief In Spiritu Sancto for the Closing of the Council; read at the closing ceremonies of 8 December by Archbishop Pericle Felici, general secretary of the council:

The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, assembled in the Holy Spirit and under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom we have declared Mother of the Church, and of St. Joseph, her glorious spouse, and of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, must be numbered without doubt among the greatest events of the Church . . .

At last all which regards the holy ecumenical council has, with the help of God, been accomplished and all the constitutions, decrees, declarations and votes have been approved by the deliberation of the synod and promulgated by us . . .

We decided moreover that all that has been established synodally is to be religiously observed by all the faithful, for the glory of God and the dignity of the Church and for the tranquillity and peace of all men. We have approved and established these things, decreeing that the present letters are and remain stable and valid, and are to have legal effectiveness, so that they be disseminated and obtain full and complete effect, and so that they may be fully convalidated by those whom they concern or may concern now and in the future; and so that, as it be judged and described, all efforts contrary to these things by whomever or whatever authority, knowingly or in ignorance be invalid and worthless from now on.

Given in Rome at St. Peter’s, under the [seal of the] ring of the fisherman, Dec. 8, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the year 1965, the third year of our pontificate.

  1. Reactionaries will blithely judge the pope; in this instance they say that he messed up, that the charism of infallibility exercised in ratifying an ecumenical council was only half-effective. And they will claim, furthermore, that this is not private judgment, and expect us to calmly accept their pontifications declaring that the real pope was wrong in his authoritative judgments of an authoritative council.
  1. Rather than simply pronounce the more consistent (though utterly false) view that the hated council was invalid, instead we hear of “ambiguity,” which then becomes a convenient “club” to bash the council with impunity, not allowing (like all conspiratorial theories) of any rational disproof.
  1. I don’t find Vatican II particularly “ambiguous.” I find it nuanced and complex, and I don’t think those are bad things; I fully expect them from spiritually mature persons and churches.
  1. Subtlety and complexity are distinct from a deliberate ambiguity inherently lending itself to a heterodox interpretation. The book of Revelation might be said to be “ambiguous.” St. Paul’s writings are “ambiguous” in many places. But we don’t deny their inspiration because of it. Likewise, we don’t change our view of the nature of ecumenical councils because we have to exercise our brains a bit in order to understand one of them. An exhaustive study of the works of St. Augustine alone would offer more than enough challenge for anyone to synthesize it all. Difficulty of interpretation or application does not equal essential flaw.
  1. According to Vatican II: Lumen Gentium 25 (as reiterated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #884, 891 and the Code of Canon Law, can. 337 § 1; and 1322-23), ecumenical councils are binding and infallible.
  1. Confusion and rebellion occurred after every single council. After Vatican I there was the crisis with the Old Catholics, and those who couldn’t accept the ex cathedra doctrine of papal infallibility. Catholic liberalism and hyper-rationalism really began to pick up steam in that period (which is precisely why Pope St. Pius X dealt with it). The Arian crisis continued in full force after Nicaea had settled it, etc. Reactionaries have an excessively short-sighted view of history.
  1. The point of the teaching of Vatican II isn’t for the Catholic message to “sell itself,” as if this were a Madison Avenue ad campaign or TV commercial (reactionaries again show, it seems to me, the influence of modern American cultural mentality). The point is to “be all things to all people that [we] may by all means save some,” a very biblical (and Pauline) approach and evangelistic outlook.
  1. While not every jot and tittle of the Vatican II documents are infallible in the extraordinary sense, nevertheless the council is entirely binding on the Catholic faithful. If a reactionary doubts that, he needs to declare which portions of the Councils of Trent, Nicæa, Chalcedon, or Vatican I he rejects, on the basis of private judgment.
  1. How is it that the Holy Spirit could prevent all the ecumenical councils from the 4th to the 19th century from error, yet when it comes to another indisputably ecumenical council, Vatican II, it is a free-for-all and a successful modernist “conspiracy of ambiguity”? Was the Holy Spirit on leave from 1962-1965? I don’t buy it. One must exercise faith. The modernists have not succeeded in perverting a single doctrine of the Catholic faith. Nor will they ever do so. If history teaches us anything, it is that. If reactionaries can’t see that with the eyes of faith, they have no business remaining Catholic. If they do see it, on the other hand, they have no business trashing Vatican II with impunity, the way they do. It’s scandalous and contemptible.
  1. The council was either double-minded or it wasn’t. Jesus said that it was impossible to serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). If a man can’t serve two masters, then how can an ecumenical council do so: which has a special charism from the Holy Spirit, and is ratified by a pope, who also has a special charism from the Holy Spirit, as the Supreme Head of the Church? The council speaks for the whole Church. As the council goes, so goes the Church. So if it is “double-minded,” then the Church is also.
  1. The entire reactionary argument concerning the alleged “ambiguity” of Vatican II rests on an obvious and glaring fallacy: viz.,

P1 The Council says x (in its actual words).

P2 The “conservatives” (i.e., orthodox Catholics) interpret the words in a Catholic sense, consistent with sacred tradition.

P3 The liberals (or, modernists) interpret the words in a heterodox, un-Catholic, revolutionary sense.

C1 The words of the council must therefore lend themselves — in their essence, intrinsically, and objectively — to either interpretation.

C2 Since both readings occur in fact, therefore the council is deliberately ambiguous, and “compromises the faith.”

The fallacy lies in C1, leading to further false assertion C2. It is not established by logic; nor is it proven that the council is the sole (or even primary) cause of what comes after it. One can see how fallacious this is, using the analogy of the Bible:

PP1 The Bible says x (in its actual words).

PP2 Catholics interpret the words in a Catholic sense, consistent with sacred tradition.

PP3 Protestants, and heretics such as Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons interpret (many of) the words in a heterodox, un-Catholic sense.

CC1 The words of the Bible must therefore lend themselves — in their essence, intrinsically, and objectively — to either the Catholic or the heretical interpretation.

CC2 Since both readings occur in fact, therefore the Bible is deliberately ambiguous, and “compromises the faith.”

The reasoning is precisely the same in both cases. All Christian sects and heresies appeal to the Bible (and here we encounter the doctrinal and hermeneutical relativism of sola Scriptura). Likewise, liberals appeal to Vatican II. We would expect no less, since they also appeal to Scripture (even homosexual activists try to find support for their abominable viewpoints in Scripture, with some of the worst, twisted exegesis known to man). Pro-abortionists find abortion in the U.S. Constitution, under a supposed “right to privacy” — rather like the ersatz liberal alleged “spirit” of Vatican II. Just as the Bible in no wise teaches what they claim it does, so it is the case that Vatican II does not teach their damnable heresies, either.

One must look at the objective words of the council, interpreted through cross-reference within its own documents, and the historical precedent of Catholic orthodoxy, just as one does with the Bible: through exegesis, hermeneutics, and the appeal to the apostolic tradition as a norm of authentic interpretation. Reactionaries have it exactly backwards — they locate the meaning of the conciliar documents in the liberal distortions and “co-opting” of them, which makes no sense at all; in fact, it is scandalous, coming from those who claim to be upholding tradition. It is as unseemly as taking a Mormon interpretation of Scripture as the criterion for proper biblical hermeneutics, then condemning the Bible because of the heretical and false nature of Mormon teaching.

  1. Biblical vs. conciliar “ambiguity” — another analogy:

1) The Bible is said (by agnostics, atheists, stuffed-shirt professors, and modernists) to be full of many irreconcilable contradictions, which are considered to be evidence of its untrustworthiness and lack of divine inspiration and infallibility.

2) Likewise, infallible councils and papal pronouncements (especially since “1958” — which seems to be the “magic” year of transformation) are said (by modernists, reactionaries, Orthodox, and Protestants) to be full of many irreconcilable contradictions, which are considered to be evidence of their untrustworthiness and lack of divine guidance and infallibility.

Where is the difference in principle between the two scenarios? Christians can readily see the folly and insufficiently compelling nature of the first argument. Countless so-called contradictions or “impossibilities” in Holy Scripture have been resolved by textual advances, archaeological discoveries, scholarly exegesis, linguistic analysis, documented fulfilled prophecy, the exposing of unnecessarily and unfairly hostile academic theories, etc. Many “paradoxes” on their face have been clearly shown to be in fact logically complementary. The supposed “contradiction” is almost always merely an outgrowth of a prior prejudice and preconceived notions (oftentimes a flat-out anti-supernaturalism of radical philosophical or textual skepticism).

The point is that the committed, devout Christian of any stripe, grants to the Bible its inspired status. He has faith that it is indeed God’s Revelation, God-breathed, preserved in its text in almost miraculous fashion, canonized by Catholic councils under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, maker of western civilization and breaker of cycles of immorality and decadence, and of tyrannies and tin pot dictators throughout history. The supposed “errors” are believed to have a solution. The benefit of the doubt is granted to Holy Scripture, while scholars wrestle with the “difficulties” of text and exegesis. One has faith, based on what they have seen by way of positive proofs and indications — a cumulative case which rings true, which is not contrary to reason, but which transcends it; harmonizes with it. This is Catholic, and general Christian belief.

So why is it different when it comes to the Church and the papacy? Catholicism is a three-legged stool: Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, and Holy Mother Church, led by the Holy Father, the pope. How is it that self-professed Catholics can deign to summarily dismiss decrees of an ecumenical council, assuming (with a deluded air of “certainty”) from the outset that they contradict earlier pronouncements of popes and councils? Why is not the benefit of the doubt and suspension of skepticism allowed in this instance?

How can people who claim to believe in the indefectibility of the Church, and supernatural protection against any error that would bind the faithful, believe such things? What becomes of faith in God’s promises? Does such a person actually believe for a moment that God would allow mere modernists, who — by doubting and disbelieving — have lost the supernatural virtue of faith altogether, to subvert an ecumenical council, and by implication, the Church itself?

The very notion is preposterous! It is unthinkable within the orthodox Catholic framework of faith. It is un-Catholic. It has never happened, and will never happen. And it is the triumph of private judgment and modernist skepticism within the Church (i.e., among the crowd who accept these ludicrous propositions). One must persevere! One must keep the faith! One must take the long view of history, if there remains any doubt that God has supernaturally protected His Church. What becomes of one’s Christian assurance and trust in the Lord, existing side-by-side with this incessant Protestantized doubt about magisterial pronouncements?

  1. I believe in the Church, because I believe in the God Who established it. I don’t believe it can defect, because Jesus said so, and because history itself more than amply bears this out. I don’t believe that the modernists will ever subvert it. Even most critics of Vatican II — wanting to hang on to indefectibility — seek to maintain a schizophrenic approach: that it was “ambiguous,” that it did not espouse heresy, yet its language encouraged it, etc., along with a host of other ludicrous equivocations and rationalizing word games, which – foolish as they are – at least bear witness to the fact that the reactionaries who think in this fashion feel the internal tension and contradiction of their position.

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Summary: Chapter 12 of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version).

November 22, 2023

November 22, 2023 By
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Chapter 11 (pp. 91-98) of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised second edition: 17 August 2013; slightly revised again in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version). Anyone who reads this book should first read the following three introductory articles, in order to fully understand the definitions and sociological categories I am employing:

Introduction (on the book page)

Definitions: Radical Catholic Reactionaries, Mainstream “Traditionalists,” and Supposed “Neo-Catholics” [revised 8-6-13]

Radical Catholic Reactionaries: What They Are Not [9-28-21]

If you’re still confused and unclear as to my meanings and intent after that, read one or more of these articles:

Rationales for My Self-Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionaries” [8-6-13]

My Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionary”: Clarifications [10-5-17]

Clarifying My Coined Term, “Radical Catholic Reactionary” [4-3-20]

This book is modeled after the method and structure of the French mathematician and Catholic apologist Blaise Pascal’s classic, Pensées (“thoughts”). Catholic apologist and philosopher Peter Kreeft described this masterpiece as “raw pearls” and “more like ‘sayings’ than a book . . . ‘Sayings’ reflect and approximate the higher, the mode of Christ and Socrates and Buddha. That’s why Socrates is the greatest philosopher, according to St. Thomas (S.T. III, 42, 4).”

I am not intending to compare myself or my own “thoughts” or their cogency or import in any way, shape, or form, to those of Pascal, let alone to Socrates or our Lord Jesus! I am merely utilizing the unconventional structure of the Pensées, which  harmonizes well, I believe, with the approach that I have taken with regard to the present subject. I have sought to analyze (minus proper names, a la Trent) the premises, presuppositions, logical and ecclesiological “bottom lines” and (in a word), the spirit of a false and divisive radical Catholic reactionary strain of thought held by a distinctive sociological sub-group of Catholics.

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  1. Vatican II supposedly changed Catholic doctrine, hence that council is thought to be heterodox and heretical (radical Catholic reactionaries almost always express this proposition in equivocal language). This cannot happen in a valid ecumenical council, according to the principle of infallibility, indefectibility, papal authority, and previously assumed Catholic ecclesiology.
  1. The novelty and irony here is the refusal of reactionaries to accept the expressed magisterium of the Church. This is nothing new: it has plenty of precursors in past heresies and dissenters from councils, such as the Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Protestants, and Old Catholics.
  1. Vatican II operated on the same ecclesiological and theological principles as all former councils, but reactionaries operate on the analogy of the heretics throughout history: all of whom thought they knew better than the solemnly expressed will and mind of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, and headed by the Holy Father.
  1. There is no difference in authoritative principle whatsoever, between the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council. The question is not one of extraordinary dogmatic definitions, but rather, of routine obedience to a council, which requires obedience by its very nature, according to the Church fathers and unbroken Catholic tradition.
  1. I agree with reactionaries that some heterodox liberals and modernists were present at the Second Vatican Council; even that they had a nefarious plan to subvert the council. I deny that they succeeded in getting their heresies into the documents. The Holy Spirit saw that that didn’t happen.
  1. Reactionaries maintain that the Second Vatican Council deliberately and consciously sought a compromise with humanistic modernism, and that the tragic results can be observed in its documents. This is merely more equivocation: the council is not heretical; rather, it is “compromised.” We so-called “conservatives” (orthodox Catholics, in objective terminology) deny this absolutely. The council is orthodox. It did not depart at all from Catholic tradition. The Holy Spirit would not allow such a thing. This is Catholic belief and faith; this is Catholic tradition. How is it that these elementary aspects of the Catholic faith can be flat-out denied by people claiming to uphold (over against alleged “compromisers” — orthodox Catholics like myself) “traditionalism”?! The world (as well as the Church) is again turned upside-down by such insolence and presumption.
  1. I deny this concept of quasi-defectibility, since ecumenical councils cannot depart from the faith in this fashion, if indeed they are ecumenical councils. Thus, the only rational recourse for reactionaries who despise Vatican II is to prove that it is not a valid ecumenical council in the first place — surely an impossible task. Knowing that this is impossible (so I would hypothesize), they resort to the empty charge of “ambiguity” and “compromise,” so as to denigrate the council whose teachings they so detest, for erroneous reasons. It’s valid, yet somehow simultaneously reprehensible and a departure from previous Catholicism — precisely as they believe about recent popes, and the New Mass. It is a foolish game, a dangerous and unnecessary one, and spiritually dangerous to souls.
  1. As far as I can tell, many reactionaries adopt the logical fallacy (post hoc ergo propter hoc) of thinking that because the council preceded the things they don’t like (some quite justifiably so), that therefore it is the root cause of all these things. “Modernism flourished after the council, therefore the council must be modernist . . .”
  1. Many reactionaries seem to require an ex cathedra papal pronouncement in order to fully accept the authority and orthodoxy of Vatican II. But there is little reason to believe that the bulk of reactionaries would accept such a proclamation, as it goes against their opinions, and since we observe how cavalierly and “modernistically” they selectively accept papal proclamations as it is. Such a pronouncement would likely make reactionaries want to leave the Church — give up on it as a hopeless case. They have already made up their own mind that the Holy Father is wrong, about this and many other issues. Why should anyone think they would receive this papal statement with assent, rather than dissent? Their modernist-influenced “cafeteria Catholicism” precludes such a mass acceptance, I think. This is not the Catholic spirit; it is the spirit of disobedience, private judgment, and schism.
  1. There is no such thing as going back to an ecumenical council and “deleting the whole thing from the record,” so to speak. This is impossible, both from the nature of things, and because it would constitute a glaring contradiction between one pope and another. One could, however, adopt Luther’s position of being totally willing to abandon any mere council or papal decree (even an entire Christian tradition), if his conscience so dictated. But of course that is Protestantism, and its principles of sola Scriptura, private judgment, and absolute supremacy of the individual conscience, not Catholicism . . . Once again, reactionaryism betrays its (quite ironic) latent Protestant affinities and sympathies . . .
  1. The difference in estimations of Vatican II – in large part — lie in how one initially approaches the issue. I assume, as a devout Catholic — in faith and given the evidence of Church history — that the council is consistent with previous Catholic doctrine. This can be demonstrated, as well, by orthodox Catholic theologians and canonists. Now, when a reactionary approaches the council, does he view these so-called “innovations” or “novelties” – in faith — as developments that may be difficult to understand, or corruptions which are difficult to reconcile? It is all in the premise . . . To simply work out difficulties, nuances, and complexities is one thing. The Bible is inerrant; nevertheless, it doesn’t follow for a second that there are not textual and theological and exegetical difficulties to be mulled over and worked through. Likewise with the council; one has to start with either a hostile or an embracing assumption. To take the hostile assumption is to go against what the pope said about the council, and the analogy of earlier councils; therefore involving the utter absurdity (granting Catholic ecclesiology) of placing theologians or private persons over against the pope — precisely as both modernists and Protestants do. Thus reactionaries are to the council what the liberal higher critics are to the Bible. Their initial hostile assumption is fallacious, so that the house of cards they build upon it is fundamentally flawed. Likewise with reactionary presuppositions and the reactionary “house.”
  1. One reactionary referred, typically, to the “fervor” which “devotees of Vatican II” possessed. This terminology is loaded and absurd. Who talks of “devotees” of Trent or Chalcedon? A council is a council. If indeed it is one, the Catholic accepts it as a matter of course, not due to being a “devotee,” as if it were like following a movie star or a hairstyle. So this brings us back, as always, to the question of whether Vatican II was a valid council. I haven’t seen any reactionary demonstrate with rational argument that it was not. Therefore, the very language they use to describe the council is rash and imprudent, as well as inconsistent.
  1. It remains obviously true that the council and it’s so-called “spirit” or (heterodox) interpretation are not identical. Reactionaries want to attribute every stupid, modernist teaching of the last fifty years to the council itself. If it can’t be traced to actual teaching, then the subterfuge of deliberate “ambiguity” is utilized for the Cause. Reactionaries have created their own little box no one can penetrate. No one can disagree without themselves being stamped with the “scarlet letter” of “modernism” or the ubiquitous charge of denial of reality (the hallmark of mental illness).
  1. There is no way for any self-professed Catholic to deny the validity of Vatican II as an ecumenical council. It was called by a sitting pope (how could anyone possibly deny that status to Pope St. John XXIII?), and attended by 2,860 bishops. And of course, nothing it promulgated contradicted the tradition of the Church in the least (including the Decree on Ecumenism and the Declaration on Religious Liberty). Whoever denies its validity, places themselves in the same ilk as the heretical Arians vis-a-vis the Council of Nicaea, the Nestorians in relation to Ephesus, and the Monophysites with regard to Chalcedon, not to mention the “Old Catholics” who refused to accept the dogma of papal infallibility and departed from the visible unity of the Church after the Vatican Council of 1870. The schismatic and heretical spirit has always fought against doctrinal development and the social, intellectual, and evangelistic progress of the Church. It is a shortsighted, tunnel vision spirit that shows itself quite ignorant both of Church history and apostolic tradition.
  1. How is Martin Luther’s dissent against Catholic conciliar authority different from reactionary undermining of Vatican II, which cannot not be an ecumenical council by any stretch of consistent Catholic reasoning? Reactionaries merely start later in time. The principle remains the same. Their schismatic attitude begins in 1962 or so (1958?), rather than 1054 or 1517. They arbitrarily pick what they don’t care for and/or don’t understand in Church teaching and decide that they know more than a pope or an ecumenical council.
  1. The view claiming that Vatican II constituted a successful modernist revolution in the Church, is nonsense and unable to be consistently demonstrated within a Catholic framework. One would have to believe that, either:

1) Pope St. John XXIII was not a valid pope, hence couldn’t convoke a council;

2) The council itself is invalid, thus establishing that councils can err, just as Luther held in 1521;

3) That God would allow His Church to be taken in by such pernicious error – thus contradicting our Lord’s promises in Matthew 16:18 and John 16:13.

  1. Councils have always been abused and misinterpreted — this is no new phenomenon. Dollinger and the Old Catholics split off because they rejected papal infallibility at Vatican I in 1870. The Monophysites left after Chalcedon in 451. And of course Trent solidified the resistance of many Protestants — particularly the Calvinists. There are always people who think they know better than God’s One True Church — set up by Him and protected from doctrinal and moral error by Almighty God, by means of apostolic succession and the charism of infallibility.
  1. A reactionary stated in a letter to me that “Vatican II was the beginning of a trend pleasing to modernists and liberals who hate the Church,” implying that this brings the council itself into question. But this response overlooked the possibility that the modernists have not understood Vatican II in the first place, or else that indeed they did understand it, and proceeded to unethically and cynically distort it for their own heterodox, schismatic, and ethically immoral ends. Either way, the result of their efforts (conscious and deliberate, well-intentioned or not) to undermine the traditional faith, liturgy, and what not, would be the same. And we see it all around us. I could argue, by this curiously deficient logic, that the Council of Nicaea was “the beginning of a trend pleasing to Arians and apostates who hate the Church.” Or I could argue that Vatican I “was the beginning of a trend pleasing to Old Catholics and conciliarists and Gallicans who hate the infallible papacy.”
  1. The Second Vatican Council sought to make the faith more relevant and compelling to modern man, without sacrificing orthodoxy and its tradition, or changing any of its essentials. In this it was successful, despite all the nonsense that also occurred. The world is messy. Serious problems aren’t quickly resolved in neat little packages, as in soap operas and fantasy movies. Maybe reactionaries think they are resolved rapidly because they are too immersed in secular western culture and can’t see how they have been harmfully influenced by its false ideas.
  1. Architectural mediocrity and the loss of the sense of the sacred and reverence are symptoms of the modern era and the larger cultural upheaval of the post-World War II period, and especially of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. This nonsense simply cannot be found in Vatican II. That advocates of secularism cited the council’s “spirit” to justify themselves is no more a case against Vatican II than the “penumbra” of the Constitution — nefariously used to “find” abortion rights in it — is a condemnation of the actual US Constitution.
  1. It’s always easier to destroy culture than to construct it. The fact that destruction and corruption proceed rapidly, by their very nature doesn’t prove anything one way or the other (in this instance, about the inherent value of Vatican II).
  1. Many Protestants are now joining the Catholic Church. Yet reactionaries are tempted to leave it because Vatican II is defended as a legitimate ecumenical council?! How strange that is! Outsiders see the Church as full of wonderful (spiritual, biblical, moral, ecclesiological, theological, intellectual, historical) things that Protestant denominations lack. One could reflect for hours upon the tragi-comic irony and sadness of that.
  1. I would note that the reactionaries of 1870, such as the excommunicate Old Catholic historian Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger, thought the definition of papal infallibility was a “novelty” and contrary to past teaching. On the other end of the spectrum were the ultramontanists. But the Church, as always, guided by the Holy Spirit, came out in 1870 with a reasonable middle position. Likewise, the same thing happened at Vatican II.
  1. If a reactionary rejects Vatican II, by decapitating it into “orthodox” and “heretical” portions, based on their own private judgment, they will no longer be orthodox Catholics.
  1. The Holy Spirit didn’t guarantee the successful application or reception of an ecumenical council’s true teaching — that is a function of human free will. What is guaranteed to be free from error are the actual (not imagined, or hoped-for) teachings of ecumenical councils. The so-called “spirit of Vatican II” is, of course, the modernist distortion of authentic conciliar teaching.
  1. The Council of Nicæa was orthodox in the midst of the Arian heresy. Likewise, Vatican II was orthodox in the midst of the modernist heresy. Do reactionaries think that their alleged charism of “obedient dissent” is superior to that which rests upon the bishops as a corporate body in council, and on the pope?
  1. If the conciliar documents had been properly applied and followed, everything would have been great. Reactionaries unfairly blame the council; I blame human rebelliousness, pride, and the cultural zeitgeist of the late 60s and 70s. God couldn’t make Adam and Eve remain sinless and obedient (given free will). Neither can Vatican II make liberals obedient.
  1. One might compare the reactionary mentality to all the errors of anti-Catholic Protestants. They engage in a quixotic, ridiculous crusade against (as Fulton Sheen said) what they erroneously think the Catholic Church is. By the same token, reactionaries engage in a futile, wrong-headed, cynical, faith-damaging endeavor to undercut the authority of, and castigate Vatican II, that they do not fully understand. But it’s part and parcel of obedience to sometimes accept what we don’t understand. This applies to a 2-year-old child and his or her father or mother, and also to all of us and God.
  1. It is absurd and tragic to have to argue about Vatican II with fellow Catholics, as opposed to Protestants or Anglicans or Orthodox (who at least are consistent in their objection to it).

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Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,500+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-three books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.
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Or you may believe my work is worthy to support for the purpose of apologetics and evangelism in general. If so, please seriously consider a much-needed financial contribution. I’m always in need of more funds: especially monthly support. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV). 1 December 2021 was my 20th anniversary as a full-time Catholic apologist, and February 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of my blog.
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PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: apologistdave@gmail.com. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing, see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!
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Summary: Chapter 11 of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version).

July 28, 2023

July 28, 2023 By
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Including Documentation of His Stated Views & Mindless Smears Sent My Way in a Catholic World Report Combox

The background of this latest incident where Dr. Williams (his words will be in blue below) has taken it upon himself to personally attack my work and myself in a very public venue (The Catholic World Report) is the dispute between Catholic philosopher Dr. Ed Feser (words in green below) and Catholic apologist Michael Lofton (which I have dealt with at length in a Facebook post). The Catholic World Report has seen fit to publish (and endorse via its editor, Carl E. Olson) two articles from Dr. Feser critiquing  Michael Lofton (both had already been published on Feser’s very popular blog). Olson wrote in the combox of the longer of the two:

I’ve been following and reading Dr. Feser’s work for many years, and I have yet to see an instance in which he misrepresents people. On the contrary, he consistently quotes them at length and provides necessary context. The “I expect better of CWR” approach doesn’t fly in the face of the evidence.

I wrote in direct reply to this observation:

Hi Carl,

Hope you are well these days.

Does the following qualify as Dr. Feser misrepresenting people? Is it ad hominem or a sweeping personal attack?:

Longtime readers might recall Dave Armstrong, a Catholic apologist who, to put it gently, has a tendency to stretch the truth in bizarre ways. His odd behavior has even inspired a definition:

armstrong, verb. Boldly but casually to insinuate a falsehood in the hope that others will go along with it. “Dave tried to armstrong me into a debate. Can you believe that guy?

Well, Dave “Stretch” Armstrong is at it again.

[Title] “Dave’s armstronging again” (6-3-21 on his blog)

[complete with a ridiculous image of “Stretch Armstrong”]

Feser in this asinine hit-piece, stated that I “posted several logorrheic comments attempting to rationalize” my “mischaracterization of” his “views by way of telepathy.” And he ended with the ultra-condescending flourish, “If some of them . . . come to know what kind of a person Dave Armstrong is, that is Dave’s fault, not mine.”

Dr. Williams happily endorsed this cynical view:

Thanks for the link to the really good read. Feser’s blog article about your remarks and your tendencies is quite accurate. You can’t armstrong your way out of it either.

Michael Lofton was subject to the same disdainful treatment:

Lofton is a contrarian attention-seeker, but he is hardly alone in that capacity in the Youtube world of self-styled Catholic apologists. The medium fosters this approach, because everyone there has to get their “Likes” and “Subscribers.” If Dr. Feser had written an article making nearly the opposite points, I suspect Lofton would still have jumped in with contrarian views designed to agitate and intimidate the easily-impressed.

I also wrote in the same combox:

Personally attacking those who have an honest disagreement is not a good thing, and it’s not wrong to point it out.

This is the problem with Internet “discourse” today. When one tries to point out that ad hominem attacks are unethical, irrelevant (non sequiturs and logically fallacious), and pollute online discussion, instead of engaging the point and taking action to reform, the person critiqued and their followers almost always simply savage and attack the one making the critique: thus amply proving the original point . . .

Hence Christians online (in this case, Catholics against Catholics) now habitually engage [in] the usual secular tactics of “shouting down” any dissenter. This impresses no one who is interested in substantive discussion.

Then I replied to Dr. Williams’ potshot above:

Thanks for the classic, playbook example of precisely what I am talking about. It doesn’t matter whether the attack is against me. That’s irrelevant. My case was but an illustration and an example of how Dr. Feser sometimes behaves.

What matters is the scandal and terrible witness of Catholics attacking other Catholics in these inane, fatuous, vapid ways. It’s bearing false witness, and a mortal sin to boot. God is watching, and He’s not fooled by all the nonsense that passes for legitimate discussion. We’re accountable for all of our words and actions.

There is legitimate criticism and holding someone accountable (“faithful are the wounds of a friend”) and there is juvenile insults and worthless ad hominem garbage.

Undaunted, Dr. Williams doubled down:

It is remarkable how many times Armstrong and Lofton have posted on this thread. They have afforded themselves limitless occasions for expressing outrage at those who object to their methods, all people who – of course – are engaged in “mortal sin.” I would challenge anyone to try such argumentation on Armstrong’s and Lofton’s own domains and see how that works out for you.

Having had enough of this verbal diarrhea, I replied:

You are more than welcome to come onto my blog at any time and defend in debate with me the proposition: “Does Dave Armstrong Habitually ‘Stretch the Truth’ and Lie and Descend to Sophistry, Since Dr. Feser has Declared So?”
You have free access to my 4,300 + online articles, and I’ll even give you free e-book files of any of my 51 books, to help you in your noble endeavor to document the truthfulness of Dr. Feser’s claims, which you have gleefully and manfully endorsed in this combox. All of your words will appear on my blog for all to see, just as I have done for most of my more than a thousand back-and-forth debates on my blog.
Then when we’re done with that, I’ll be more than happy to host on my blog a second debate between you and Michael Lofton, where you would defend the proposition, “Is Michael Lofton Obliged to Shut Down His Full-Time Catholic Apologetics Ministry Because Dr. Feser Declares That He Ought Not Write About Theology At All, As a Result of His Outrageously Daring to Express an Honest Disagreement with Dr. Feser, and That Lofton’s Replies to Him in Protest Against Alleged ‘Libel’ [the non-legal definition, mind you] Are Worthless ‘Dreck’ [a potshot on Twitter] etc.?”
[Dr. Feser had, after all, written at the end of the article under consideration:

Well, as the Scholastics and the pre-Vatican II popes who commended Scholasticism emphasized, training in philosophy is a prerequisite to doing theology well. The reason is that it disciplines the intellect, teaching one to use words precisely, to make careful conceptual distinctions, to reason with logical exactness, and to evaluate texts and arguments with caution and charity.

Lofton’s response to my article provides evidence that he is lacking in these capacities. Hence I’d suggest that he might consider sticking to his own lane, which is making facile YouTube videos – but about topics other than theology, which requires levels of rigor and charity that he appears to lack.]

Anytime you’re ready to do that, just drop me a line.
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Oh, by the way, I have been published in this magazine twice [one / two], and editor Carl E. Olson reviewed my book, The One-Minute Apologist (Sophia Institute Press, 2007) at National Catholic Register (8-21-07), writing:
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This book is commendable for being pithy and precise while never being either simplistic or dense, an indication of how well Armstrong knows his subject matter and his audience. In fact, this is the sort of book that could only be written by someone who has spent countless hours studying, articulating and discussing the Catholic faith, to the point that he knows how to accurately answer questions and clearly correct misunderstandings. . . .
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The writing is punchy but never pugnacious. . . . Accessible and substantial, The One-Minute Apologist will help readers in need of timely answers. And, just as important, it should serve as an inviting introduction to the richness and fullness of the Catholic Faith.
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So I guess I don’t need to shut down my full-time apologetics ministry (active now for over twenty-one years). And — contra Dr. Feser — I don’t think [soon to be Dr.] Michael Lofton needs to do so, either, simply because Dr. Feser says so.
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Sorry for making yet another comment here, as pitiable evidence of the “remarkable” frequency of same. My bad . . .
Thanks again to Carl and CWR for allowing dissenting opinions to be expressed.
Now, personally, I think it would be worthwhile to document some of Timothy J. Williams’ extremist, radical Catholic reactionary viewpoints, seeing that he has taken it upon himself to savage my apologetics apostolate in a very public Catholic place. A man’s prior dubious views often predispose him to say idiotic things about others who don’t hold to the same views, and who, indeed, are solidly orthodox and faithful in every Catholic sense of those words.
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Dr. Timothy J. Williams, is, or has been (not sure which) a professor of French at the Franciscan University of Steubenville (see his Curriculum Vitae). He also has a master’s degree in music and has composed. Thus we see that — admirable as these accomplishments are — he has no formal training in theology, and is hardly the one (also not being my priest or bishop) to decide whether my apologetics work is of such a low and dishonest quality that I should cease writing.

He has written fifteen “recent” articles for Crisis Magazine, which is a radical Catholic reactionary venue. He also has at least two articles published at One Peter Five, which has always been a reactionary outlet as well. Despite our differences of opinion, I am friends with Timothy Flanders, the editor of One Peter Five, and have engaged in several cordial, substantive debates with him. It is actually possible to talk across “party lines.” Timothy recognizes that we are both serious Catholics, and that’s enough for him (and vice versa).

The extremity of Dr. Williams’ theological / ecclesiological views are seen — ironically and conveniently enough — in another combox of The Catholic World Report. Let’s take a look at it, shall we? On February 26, 2021, Douglas Bushman wrote an article for that magazine entitled, “How should we think about Vatican II?” It was a defense of the orthodoxy of the council, and its continuity with Catholic tradition. Dr. Williams’ comments in the combox reveal quite clearly where he stands regarding the authority and veracity of this ecumenical council:
It is hard to believe that this sort of article is still being written in 2021. For some people at least, the human mind has an infinite capacity to delude itself in the search for comfort. Nowhere outside of academia – universities, institutes, schools of theology – is this sort of nonsense still believed. The remaining members of the dwindling remnant of the Church have moved on. We know that only a radical “about face” can salvage what was lost, what was destroyed by Vatican II. (2-27-21, 9:53 AM)
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I tried to read them [the documents of Vatican II] all. I really did. I got through only Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium. The rest I read only here and there. It was insufferable boredom. What is most apparent is that the sheer number and length of the documents . . . were intended to confuse and to conceal, to allow the implementation of the Council to take whatever shape the modernists wished. Somewhere, in all that verbiage, a line or two can be found (and have been found) to justify everything. (2-27-21, 12:32 PM) [note how — as is true of many of these anti-Vatican II naysayers — he barely read the documents at all]
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The problem I have with this “real Council” vs. “false spirit” argument is simply that the same prelates who approved the documents of Vatican II also implemented them in their respective dioceses, leading to our present shipwreck. If those who read and signed the documents “misinterpreted” them, what possible value could these documents have? (2-27-21, 8:08 PM)
Bushman’s article was reprinted at The Catholic World Report on 12 February 2023. Williams, true to form, had choice words for it again, on that occasion, in the following “Valentine”:
I am curious to know why this article is being resuscitated at this time? Are we supposed to give one last consideration to the hackneyed “authentic Council vs. false ‘spirit’ of the Council” idea? I used to hold to that, until I realized that the same Church periti who crafted the documents of the Council and the bishops who voted to approve them went home to their various dioceses and implemented the Council according to their understanding of those documents… and with the catastrophic results only a sightless fool can deny. We can argue and debate all we want concerning the state of the Faith prior to the Council, and what may or may not have been needed to revive the Faith in the hearts and minds of the faithful. What we CANNOT argue is that Vatican II was the medicine for our age, the gift of the Holy Spirit, yadda yadda yadda. I red pilled on that nonsense twenty years ago. (2-14-23, 8:04 AM) [note here that Dr. Williams repudiated the Second Vatican Council as far back as 2003. This is no “post Francis disillusionment” phenomenon. No, Williams is an old-school reactionary — I was refuting them back then, too — , who has spewed this toxic garbage for more than two decades now]
The really interesting and revealing two cents’ worth from Dr. Williams comes under an article posted at the reactionary site Rorate Caeli, which was a hit piece on Pope Francis on his first day in office: 13 March 2013 (!). I later discovered that the key source in the article, Marcelo González, is a Holocaust denier.
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Rorate Caeli has disabled its comment section: a practice followed by many reactionary sites, including One Peter Five and Crisis Magazine. I sure understand why; it’s because of relentless comments like those of Williams, that I am presently documenting. Comments on reactionary sites are the worst imaginable “PR” for the reactionary cause. Here is what our brave weaver of words wrote:
I am a Roman Rite Catholic who has attended a Byzantine Liturgy for the past 18 years, because the Roman liturgy in my diocese changes with every new breeze. . . . Now, I am a hard-core Trad. But what is amazing is that there are many, more “moderate” Catholic parents doing exactly the same thing I am doing. And yet, our Catholic sensibilities have been so poisoned by Vatican II and the Novus Ordo that we hardly even recognize the monstrosity of this situation. Even good Catholics think of things as almost “normal” or “getting better”! And people wonder why Bishop Fellay hesitates! The only reasonable hope for the Papacy of Francis is that he will will not do considerably more damage than his predecessors. Any expectation beyond that is simply delusional. Oremus! (3-13-13)
Note three extraordinary things here: his antipathy to the “Novus Ordo” [“New” / Pauline / “ordinary form”] Mass, which is in addition to his vehement opposition to Vatican II; his belief that Pope Francis’ “predecessors” (one of whom is a saint) did “damage” to the Church, and the fact that he was already trashing and being cynical about Pope Francis on literally his first day in office, before he had done anything at all.
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I’m unable to access the original at Internet Archive. Fortunately, I preserved Williams’ words at the time (an article of mine dated 20 September 2017). Reactionaries always reveal their own true stripes. One just has to know where to look, to find them.
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When we understand that a person is an extremist, fringe Catholic, far out of the mainstream, then their slanderous attacks against faithful, orthodox members and defenders of Holy Mother Church and the Holy Father (whomever he may be), like myself and Michael Lofton, are put into much clearer perspective. We defend the things and persons that Dr. Williams savages, and so he throws crap at us as a result, since he seems to be either unable or unwilling to form a cogent, coherent rational argument on these topics.
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With utter predictability, Dr. Williams responded to my long comment at CWR:
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Do you not realize all this is starting to sound a little… unhinged?
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And I replied:
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Yes, of course you would think that. And of course you attack my work, seeing that you detest Vatican II and the New Mass, and this pope and the two previous ones: things and people that I am proud — and duty-bound — to defend, as a Catholic apologist. My next blog paper will document all of this (most of it drawn from your past comments in this very venue).

This is why you oppose me, because you can’t tolerate what I stand for. It’s as simple as that (in case anyone was wondering what you had against me).

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Practical Matters: Perhaps some of my 4,300+ free online articles (the most comprehensive “one-stop” Catholic apologetics site) or fifty-three books have helped you (by God’s grace) to decide to become Catholic or to return to the Church, or better understand some doctrines and why we believe them.
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Or you may believe my work is worthy to support for the purpose of apologetics and evangelism in general. If so, please seriously consider a much-needed financial contribution. I’m always in need of more funds: especially monthly support. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim 5:18, NKJV). 1 December 2021 was my 20th anniversary as a full-time Catholic apologist, and February 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of my blog.
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PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: apologistdave@gmail.com. You’ll see the term “Catholic Used Book Service”, which is my old side-business. To learn about the different methods of contributing, including 100% tax deduction, etc., see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million from the bottom of my heart!

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Photo credit: Rory112233 (8-21-17) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

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Summary: Documentation of radical reactionary (anti-Vatican II / anti-New Mass / anti-papal) views of Dr. Timothy J. Williams: public trasher of my character and apostolate.

 

October 13, 2022

October 13, 2022 By
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I know Brazilian Catholic writer Oliveira Leonardo a bit and we have engaged in many cordial and pleasant discussions. I consider him a friend. So this is not personal. But when error is publicly promulgated, it’s my duty as a Catholic apologist to speak out and correct it. This is out of a motive of love for him and all who are reading what he is writing, and a love for truth. He made his comments on a public thread on his Facebook page. I replied there and reproduce my replies here, along with many (but not all) of his comments (which can be read in their totality at the link I just provided). His words will be in blue.
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I see Catholics celebrating CV II [Vatican II]. But the question is, what do we have to celebrate? The Church, since the 60s of the last century, has only lost prestige. And now the Pope signs a world wide accord between religions, whose policies are downright questionable.
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Are you this naive and thoughtless and “unCatholic”: to start attacking an ecumenical council and ecumenism (the two usually go hand in hand)? This shocks and saddens and disappoints me. Basically, you have adopted two basic fallacies:
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1. Everything has one cause or one primary cause (“VCII is the font of all evils in the modern world”).
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2. The fallacy of “Post hoc ergo propter hoc” (Latin: ‘after this, therefore because of this’), or “Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.”
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There are a host of reasons for the current sad state of western civilization: not the least of which is the sexual revolution: that Vatican II had absolutely nothing to do with. I would say it has nothing to do with any of our problems. It’s a completely orthodox and wonderful council, guided by the Holy Spirit, just as all the other ecumenical councils had been.
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I will be removing from my Facebook friendship list all who liked this comment. Unless you renounce this garbage, you’ll be the next in line to go.
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I’ve been critiquing what I call the “reactionary” attitude for more than 25 years (in two books [one / two] and a huge web page). It’s poison. It destroys Catholic unity. No good comes from it.
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For those who want to read some of my many defenses of Vatican II, see those articles on this web page of mine: “The [Catholic] Church and Ecclesiology” (word-search “Vatican”).
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Leonardo Pataca: But every Pope, since Saint Paul VI, has praised the Vatican Council II. Would they all be wrong?
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Your argument is a fallacy of authority. Please: Has faith grown or decreased in the last 60 years?
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Actually, it’s an argument from Catholicism. God protects popes from error. All the popes praise Vatican II. It follows that Vatican II was a good thing, which any orthodox Catholic should already know, anyway.
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You should consider the facts. And the facts reveal that secularism has won and CV II has essentially embraced a view dangerously close to liberalism. CV II’s guidelines . . . harmed apologetics.
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I am a Catholic in large part due to Vatican II, and my apologetics ministry is largely guided by its Pauline-inspired vision, too.
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Catholic countries have ceased to be Catholic, and the growth of Catholicism in some areas of the world has been largely due to an apologetics neglected by CV II. By the way, perhaps one of the few advantages of CV II was to give voice to the layman, who is doing apologetics, while the clergy has blatantly boycotted it.
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Leonardo Pataca: Yes, five Popes, including two saints, got it wrong, but your analysis obviously can’t be wrong.
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. . . which is, of course, like three things: the schismatic (Donatist-like) attitude, the Protestant rule of faith (private judgment), and theologically liberal dissidence.
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I’m waiting: why did Catholic countries stop being Catholic? Why are we increasingly seeing a secular society without faith?
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Why do you casually assume that these things have but one cause (or one primary one)? You have a brain. Use it!
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[someone objected that my critique was “completely wrong”. I replied:]
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What he is expressing here is worthless reactionary slop. I can spot it a mile away. I’ve been following it and critiquing it as serious error for over 25 years. I don’t need to know someone closely to know whether or not they are spewing error. It’s precisely the sort of language he is using that is causing no end of problems in the Church right now. People are losing faith because they see Catholics engaging in mindless “masochism”: bashing their own Church with false and heretical notions. His is textbook / playbook reactionary thought. It hasn’t changed at all since 2002, when I wrote my first book about it. I could quote lengthy sections from that book that interact with exactly the opinions he is expressing now. They’re nothing new.
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Post-conciliar language doesn’t help much, because it is confusing and gives room for heterodox conclusions.
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So is, alas, the Bible. There is no heretical group in the world (falsely claiming to be Christian) that doesn’t claim to derive its false doctrines from the Bible itself. I know. One of my first huge apologetics projects back in the early 80s was to undertake massive research on the Jehovah’s Witnesses. So do we ditch the Bible because folks with confused, troubled thinking, “get” their heretical ideas “from” it? Did the Bible actually cause that? By analogy, that’s how you are reasoning.
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American Catholicism has grown, despite CV II. Because Catholicism there is militant.
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American Catholicism has barely held its own. But the revival of Catholic apologetics and evangelism and the spate of recent converts (I’m one of those) is a very real phenomenon, of the nature of a minor revival. Again, our problems (like those of Catholics around the world in first-world countries) have nothing to do with Vatican II at all. Yet here you are bashing it as the supposed primary cause. You have thrown away your brain, which is a great shame.
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Post-conciliation Catholicism is a total failure.
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That’s equal parts blasphemy and heresy. The Church cannot “fail”, because she is indefectible. That is Catholic dogma. The papacy is also indefectible, which was dogmatically proclaimed at Vatican I in 1870. The Church can, of course, go through times of spiritual decline, (inevitably) eventually followed by revival. We’re in one of those times, but Holy Mother Church herself has not “failed.” Catholics have failed to live up to the high ideals of Catholic Christianity and discipleship, as has always been the case from the beginning.
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Latin America and traditionally Catholic countries such as Spain and Portugal are radically secularized . . .
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So are America and many other countries. And you think that is solely or primarily because of Vatican II? Are you that shortsighted and blind? You can see no other causes? I can see about a hundred other ones: none of which are Vatican II and the doctrines and dogmas of the Catholic Church, preserved since the time of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit.
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And even though CV II has not substantially changed issues concerning faith,
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It hasn’t changed any doctrines of the faith. It has developed some fresh approaches, which is fine, and has always taken place. Augustine and Aquinas and Newman all did that.
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[I]ts political and pastoral attitude towards modernity has been a disaster.
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It has not. Dissident Catholics within the Church are the disaster, and you are placing yourself among them with this pathetic rhetoric.
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Fall of vocations, fall in the number of Catholics, radical secularization of Catholic countries and a warm, lukewarm attitude towards apologetics . . . 
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And that’s all because of Vatican II and nothing else, according to you? If you think not, then stop using the extreme, exclusivistic language and start naming other causes of all the tragic problems.
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I will answer every point of my friend Dave Armstrong . Let me clear it up. I fully understand your concerns. But I’ll make some points clear; no problem. Hugs.
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It’s nothing personal at all (and I’m glad and relieved that you seem to not be taking it personally). I feel that I am defending Holy Mother Church, which is part of the duty of a Catholic apologist. What you are expressing, I have seen a thousand times for over 25 years. I know this sort of thinking inside and out.
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CV II uses completely new and strange terminology to the previous texts, causing a dangerous doubt. Dignitatis Humanae, for example, is a very problematic text, precisely because it defends the religious freedom condemned by the previous popes.
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There is no problem with it, as I showed in my defense of that document: included in my 12-part refutation of Paolo Pasqualucci’s trashing of the council.

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There are many statements from CV II that seem to contradict the Syllabus and too many earlier Church texts.
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Sometimes they can, because it has to do with discipline, practice, or approach: things which are not infallible in the first place. But no doctrine is untraditional. You are adopting the very same mentalities of the liberal dissidents you claim to be against. Wake up! The problem lies in you at the moment, not in Vatican II.
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[It] looks like Mr. Dave Armstrong sees me with certain ideological labels that I have never defended, either with the breast of “reactionary” or denying legitimacy to CV II. Far from it . CV II is valid as the popes have been valid since then.
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Reactionaries always say that VCII is valid and that the New Mass or the pope is. And then they go on to absurdly and impiously trash them. You simply don’t understand what reactionary thinking is. I do, because I’ve studied it closely and critiqued it for over 25 years. You’re so immersed in it you don’t know that you are. You’re like a fish in water, who denies that it is in water.
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[I]t should be added that at no point did I attribute “only” to CV II the reason for the evils of the Church.
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That’s not true. In your rhetoric, you kept asking someone else — over and over –, why the Church is suffering and secularization is triumphing, etc., with the strong implication, in context, that VCII was the cause: if not the only one, then the primary cause. You never mentioned any other cause. You wrote (at least according to the English translation):
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Has faith grown or decreased in the last 60 years? [60 years ago = 1962]
CV II has essentially embraced a view dangerously close to liberalism. [classic, quintessential reactionary slop; textbook, playbook]
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the growth of Catholicism in some areas of the world has been largely due to an apologetics neglected by CV II. / American Catholicism has grown, despite CV II. [i.e., when the Church thrives, it’s despite VCII, not because of it.]
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Why are we increasingly seeing a secular society without faith? [again implying that VCII is the sole or primary cause; never mentioning any other possible reason]
Post-conciliation Catholicism is a total failure. [God’s Church can never totally fail, and this is dogma, as I pointed out. To claim that it can is no different from the revolutionary mentality of Luther and Calvin]
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You’re obviously digging in now and have no intention of renouncing this outrageous rhetoric. How sad. I noted that I had defended Dignitatis Humanae. You’re welcome to try to refute that, but in my experience, when people have their minds made up and have espoused error, they very rarely interact with critiques of their sort of thinking. So I don’t expect it to happen.
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I think that maybe Mr. Dave has no clue what it was like to live in this kind of Catholic society, since he lives in a country of Protestant and secular tradition.
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That’s very true indeed. I can read and learn about it (and I have) but I haven’t lived in that environment. But that makes it all the more ironic that I am (as a former Protestant and resident of a thoroughly Protestant and now secular country) defending Holy Mother Church and one of her ecumenical councils over against a person who has had the privilege of growing up in an historically Catholic country. You’re “biting the hand that has fed you.”
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I’m the one now who is thinking like a Catholic; thinking with the Mind of the Church, whereas you have rejected that, and ridiculously feel that you are in a position to trash and bash an ecumenical council. That’s theological liberalism and the Protestant mentality, not how a consistent devout Catholic thinks.
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So you have bought the slop in your [formerly] Catholic country, and masochistically trash your own Church, but I think like a Catholic (by choice) in my Protestant one. I love the Church as a convert does, because I found the “pearl of great price.” I know how much better it is than Protestantism and secularism: having formerly adopted and lived both of those things.
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The fact remains that people in these traditionally Catholic countries like Spain, Portugal, Latin America, and Brazil have decided en masse to reject Catholicism. Even if Vatican II were to blame for that (which I vehemently deny), it doesn’t get all these people who rejected the faith off the hook. It was their personal choice to worship sex and/or secularism and/or Marxism and/or pleasure. They will stand alone before God, and God won’t accept their excuses.
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On the other hand, I had the choice to reject secularism and whatever is false in Protestantism, and to embrace the fullness of truth in Catholicism, whether America was Protestant or VCII was a terrible thing or not. We simply can’t blame loss of faith entirely on a council (again, even if we wrongly think — as you do — that it could err to that extent).
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I’ll guarantee (as an apologist and social observer and critic these past 40 years) that if we went out and asked any individual who has left Catholicism in Brazil, why they did so, it would not be because of VCII’s position on religious liberty. It would be because of various and sundry lies about the Church that they have accepted, and their own ignorance and lack of catechetical formation. That is the fault of themselves and whatever Catholic teachers they have had: who failed in their task.
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Good teaching brings about converts and revival. I know that from my own case. I have seen many hundreds of people convert or return to the Church, as a partial result, by God’s grace, of some of my writings. The truth has power. It will draw people in. So these apostates usually didn’t have adequate teaching, or if they did, they neglected or rejected it. And that has nothing to do with Vatican II: nor does Marxism or obsessions with immoral sex.
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Another downside to CV II: [hostility to] apologetics. The clergy, in the name of a certain ecumenism and “dialogue between religions”, dismissed apologetics, by considering it offensive to other religions. If that was the intention of CV II, I don’t know. But many bishops and priests have ceased doing apologetics and defending the Church, and instead called for peaceful coexistence with other religions: a dangerous kind of irenicism.
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Again, the problem here isn’t the teaching of Vatican II. It’s all for evangelization. In Lumen Gentium, we find the following:
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As the Son was sent by the Father, so He too sent the Apostles, saying: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world”. The Church has received this solemn mandate of Christ to proclaim the saving truth from the apostles and must carry it out to the very ends of the earth. Wherefore she makes the words of the Apostle her own: “Woe to me, if I do not preach the Gospel”, and continues unceasingly to send heralds of the Gospel until such time as the infant churches are fully established and can themselves continue the work of evangelizing. For the Church is compelled by the Holy Spirit to do her part that God’s plan may be fully realized, whereby He has constituted Christ as the source of salvation for the whole world. . . . The obligation of spreading the faith is imposed on every disciple of Christ, according to his state. (II, 17; my bolding and italics)
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[T]he laity go forth as powerful proclaimers of a faith in things to be hoped for, when they courageously join to their profession of faith a life springing from faith. This evangelization, that is, this announcing of Christ by a living testimony as well as by the spoken word, takes on a specific quality and a special force in that it is carried out in the ordinary surroundings of the world. . . . the laity can and must perform a work of great value for the evangelization of the world. For even if some of them have to fulfill their religious duties on their own, when there are no sacred ministers or in times of persecution; and even if many of them devote all their energies to apostolic work; still it remains for each one of them to cooperate in the external spread and the dynamic growth of the Kingdom of Christ in the world. (IV, 35; my bolding and italics)
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Is apologetics disparaged? Nope. Rather, it’s commanded:
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It is through the sacraments and the exercise of the virtues that the sacred nature and organic structure of the priestly community is brought into operation. Incorporated in the Church through baptism, the faithful are destined by the baptismal character for the worship of the Christian religion; reborn as sons of God they must confess before men the faith which they have received from God through the Church. They are more perfectly bound to the Church by the sacrament of Confirmation, and the Holy Spirit endows them with special strength so that they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ. (II, 11; my bolding and italics)
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The Catechism teaches the same:
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905 Lay people also fulfill their prophetic mission by evangelization, “that is, the proclamation of Christ by word and the testimony of life.” For lay people, “this evangelization . . . acquires a specific property and peculiar efficacy because it is accomplished in the ordinary circumstances of the world.”
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So anti-apologetics or anti-evangelization and wishy-washy indifferentism are false notions that cannot be found in Vatican II or the Catechism. Vatican II also firmly proclaims and reiterates that there is no salvation outside of the Church. What you are talking about comes from theological liberalism. It has adopted an unbiblical and unCatholic “either/or” mentality. The liberal loves ecumenism but despises apologetics. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the reactionary like you despises ecumenism and loves apologetics. Then there is the actual teaching of the Bible and the Church: the “orthodox center”: where I am at: I love both apologetics and ecumenism, because both are good and wonderful things, and don’t contradict each other in the slightest, because they are two different worthy goals. I’ve written about this many times.
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The irony in your rhetoric and mindset is that you condemn liberalism out of one side of your mouth, yet you adopt its false “either/or” mentality. You pit ecumenism against apologetics and claim it is liberal indifferentism. Sometimes it is, when liberals do it, because they misunderstand its central purpose. But Vatican II ecumenism is perfectly orthodox. And though certain emphases of it are quite new or fresh in approach, it’s not essentially different from anything in the past. It can be traced back, for example, to St. Thomas Aquinas. I put together that article in 1999. That’s how long I have been thinking and writing about these issues.
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You leave me no choice but to unfriend you on Facebook, just as I have all the others who liked your post. I refuse to put up with this dissident liberal and heterodox thinking, coming across my feed.
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I’m not saying we can’t still be friends and talk. It’s just Facebook, which has little significance in the overall scheme of things. But if you think like this, then you won’t benefit from my writing, and so there is no good reason I see for my posts to appear on your feed. I have stated my case here and you reject it.
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You have chosen to think like a liberal dissident and a Protestant, and I am worlds apart from either view. I rejected social and political liberalism for good in 1982 and the errors of Protestantism in 1990. I always utterly despised theological liberalism, going back to my Protestant days. But you seem enthralled with both, so I don’t see how you would benefit from my writings.
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I believe all that Holy Mother Church teaches, and that includes Vatican II as the most highly developed manifestation of the Mind of the Church. I’m a Catholic because a Catholic friend of mine, back when I was Protestant, blocking abortion clinic doors and getting arrested for it, took seriously its advice to share the faith in ways that people can understand. He talked to me about the Catholic faith for nine months (the first thing I changed my mind on was contraception), and then I gave up my groundless objections and joyfully embraced the fullness of the faith (shocking all who had observed me fighting so zealously for evangelical Protestantism).
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My mentor, Servant of God Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. (an advisor to Pope St. Paul VI and St. Teresa of Calcutta) said that anyone who rejects any doctrine of the faith loses the supernatural virtue of faith. You have either crossed that line or you are in danger of doing so. I urge you — beg and plead with you — with all my heart to reconsider this path you have gone down. And you’re taking others with you (as seen in the “likes” you are getting for this post). That’s how these outrages spread so rapidly. Itching ears; lack of thought and sufficient consideration . . .
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Jesus said: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” (Mark 9:42, RSV). If your friends in this thread, who are enthralled with your thinking on these matters, eventually lose faith because they despise VCII, and go on from that to despise the pope and the Church herself, or the Church’s moral teachings, because they think like liberal dissidents or Protestants who don’t believe in infallible popes and ecumenical councils, part of that is on you, and you will stand accountable for it before God. I’m trying to spare you that.
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The Bible also teaches: “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1) This is no small matter. You can’t oppose liberal heterodoxy by thinking the same way the liberal thinks in many respects. That’s the absurd position you have sadly adopted. “Either/or” false dichotomies . . . You’ve identified with your oppressor.
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[he then made several lengthy comments in reply, reiterating the same positions and learning nothing whatsoever from my points. They can be read on his thread, at the link listed at the top]
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All of these additional comments (which I did read, but will not further respond to, except in this statement) add up — in sum — to one thing: you are blaming Vatican II for the perverted interpretation of it promulgated by theological liberals. You’re “throwing out the baby with the bathwater”, as the saying goes.

You have the council itself confused with innumerable liberal falsehoods and lies. That is your fundamental error, and the devil rejoices over it. I can and do heartily agree with almost all of your social criticisms. But I profoundly disagree that Vatican II brought about this state of affairs. We don’t disagree on the secular results and the tragedy of the loss of faith in societies, institutions, and individuals. We totally disagree on the causes.

Vatican II was butchered and distorted, and hardly even read, by these faithless, witless theologically liberal morons — sometimes literally wolves in sheep’s clothing — who invoke it in order to supposedly bolster their damnable errors. What could make the devil more happy than to see zealous Catholics like you and multiple millions out there who now think like you do, bashing Vatican II, when the real target ought to be the liberal dissidents who have tortured and abused and misrepresented the council?

This is identifying with the oppressor. In fighting so hard against the liberals and theologically liberal rotgut, you started thinking like them. In fact, they reject Vatican II because they know (unlike you) that it is thoroughly in line with previous Catholic tradition. That’s precisely why they have to misrepresent it. This is what liars and manipulators of public opinion always do. They take what is accepted and respected and pretend that it is something other than what it actually is. And now you mirror their error and lie.

By (in effect) persuading you to bash what is a perfectly good and proper Catholic council, their victory over you is complete. Now they have you working for them within the Church — causing all kinds of havoc and division — , as a useful idiot. This is the most insidious aspect of reactionary dissidence.

I have tried my best to get you to see this, but so far you don’t. Well, then, maybe some others who are reading this will see how dangerous and destructive your error is. They can’t unread what I have written, if they have read it, and will henceforth be responsible for what they have read. I’m sounding the alarm and issuing the warning: to you and your readers. Take it or leave it. Your choice.

You can lead a life of bitching and pissing and moaning within the Church, about the Church: doing those things that St. Paul roundly condemned over and over (and told us to separate from those who did it), or you can decide to join me and many others in defending Holy Mother Church, including her solemn ecumenical council, Vatican II.

You can continue to think like a dissident liberal or like Luther and Calvin did (rejecting councils), or you can think like a consistent, devout, observant Catholic and cease and desist with this destructive, damnable rhetoric.

I detest and comment upon the problems among Catholics as much as anyone does. You have nothing on me in this respect. But I don’t attack Holy Mother Church herself. Theological liberalism and pick-and-choose dissidence is the problem, not Vatican II. Read my 12-part defense of the council over against a rabid reactionary critic of it: which would — what a novelty! — actually bring about a real dialogue about the council.

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Summary: Brazilian Catholic writer Oliveira Leonardo has decided to start bashing and trashing Vatican II. I defend it and note that his oppositional zeal is utterly misplaced.

September 17, 2021

September 17, 2021 By

Ranked in Order from Most Dissenting Votes to Least Dissenting Votes

I am drawing this from: Vatican II — Voice of the Church: The Sixteen Documents and their Consequences. My interjections will be in blue.

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DECREE ON THE MEDIA OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATION: December 4 [1963]: Solemn final voting (1960 for, 164 against) [7.7% dissenting or a 12-to-one ratio in favor]

DECLARATION ON NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS: October 28 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2221 for, 88 against) [3.8% dissenting or a 25-to-one ratio in favor]

PASTORAL CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: December 7 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2309 for, 75 against) [3.1% dissenting or a 31-to-one ratio in favor]

DECLARATION ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: December 7 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2308 for, 70 against) [2.9% dissenting or a 33-to-one ratio in favor]

DECREE ON EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES: November 21 [1964]: Solemn final voting (2110 for, 39 against) [1.8% dissenting or a 54-to-one ratio in favor]

DECLARATION ON CHRISTIAN EDUCATION: October 28 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2290 for, 35 against) [1.5% dissenting or a 65-to-one ratio in favor]

DECREE ON ECUMENISM: November 21 [1964]: Solemn final voting (2137 for, 11 against) [0.51% dissenting or a 194-to-one ratio in favor]

DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON DIVINE REVELATION: November 18 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2344 for, 6 against) [o.26% dissenting or a 391-to-one ratio in favor]

DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH: November 21 [1964]: Solemn final voting (2151 for, 5 against) [0.23% dissenting or a 430-to-one ratio in favor]

DECREE ON THE MISSIONARY ACTIVITY OF THE CHURCH: December 7 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2394 for, 5 against) [0.21% dissenting or a 479-to-one ratio in favor]

CONSTITUTION ON THE LITURGY: December 4 [1963]: Solemn final voting (2147 for, 4 against) [0.19% dissenting or a 537-to-one ratio in favor]

DECREE ON THE CONTEMPORARY RENEWAL OF RELIGIOUS LIFE: October 28 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2321 for, 4 against) [0.17% dissenting or a 580-to-one ratio in favor]

DECREE ON PRIESTLY LIFE AND MINISTRY: December 4 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2390 for, 4 against) [0.17% dissenting or a 598-to-one ratio in favor]

DECREE ON PRIESTLY FORMATION: October 28 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2318 for, 3 against) [0.13% dissenting or a 773-to-one ratio in favor]

DECREE ON THE LAY APOSTOLATE: November 18 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2305 for, 2 against) [0.087% dissenting or an 1153-to-one ratio in favor]

DECREE ON THE PASTORAL OFFICE OF BISHOPS: October 28 [1965]: Solemn final voting (2319 for, 2 against) [0.086% dissenting or an 1160-to-one ratio in favor] 

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Related Reading

See many related articles by searching “Vatican II” on my Catholic Church and Ecclesiology web page.

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Photo credit: manhhai (9-20-12). Pope John XXIII leads the opening session of the Second Vatican Council in St. Peter’s Basilica Oct. 11, 1962 [Flickr / CC BY 2.0 license]

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Summary: The bishops of Vatican II (over 2000 in number) overwhelmingly agreed on the documents passed. The highest dissent was only 7.7% & 10 of 16 had less than 0.51% dissent.

 

September 22, 2020

September 22, 2020 By
Radical reactionary Catholic Hilary White wrote on 7-31-10 at The Remnant / cross-posted on Rorate Caeli on 8-29-10:
Benedict is of that generation that put all their eggs into the Vatican II basket and is determined to ‘make the council work’. This despite that 45 years after its close, they are still arguing over what its purpose was. Like nailing Jell-O to the wall. Younger Catholics, those of us that are left in the pews, simply cannot understand this obsession of the last generation with that monumental failure. But for the Ratzinger generation, ‘The Council’ defined Catholicism, and it seems they cannot be convinced to give it a dignified burial. [From: “Introducing Hilary White (The Remnant’s Rome Correspondent)”]
She also trashed Pope St. John Paul II in the same interview. All the “usual suspects” are promulgating this radical Catholic reactionary rotgut these days. LifeSiteNews stated on 9 June 2014, in its article: “In defense of Hilary White”: “All of the Catholic staff of LifeSiteNews are unusually knowledgeable and faithful sons of the Church.”
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I see. So it is “faithful” to say that an ecumenical council of the Church is so irrelevant that it is a “monumental failure” that should be given “a dignified burial” and that Catholics (including even Pope Benedict XVI) who actually admire and abide by its teachings are suffering from a harmful obsession?
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It’s said by many that the problem with Vatican II was in its “implementation”. Bad implementation is what we can all agree on. I have no problem with that, because that ties in with the “Spirit of Vatican II” nonsense from the liberals that we all agree was rotgut. I would say that Hilary (above) was not talking about implementation, but rather, the council itself. She said no one can figure out its purpose, which was like “nailing Jell-O to the wall.” She assumes it is a total failure and that its advocates are obsessed (almost as if we’re nuts, since “obsessed” is at least a neurosis). And she wants to “bury” it.
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That ain’t talking about whether it has been properly implemented. That is, rather, dissing it altogether, which is unacceptable, I contend, for any orthodox Catholic to do. This is my criticism of radical Catholic reactionaries. They habitually throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s not enough to say that Vatican II was promulgated badly. They have to attack it itself. Same thing with the ordinary form Mass. Same thing with ecumenism. In all three cases, they go after the essence of the things, rather than corruptions or abuses (as I do, quite a bit).
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This is why I put them in a different category, and why folks have lost patience with their endless complaints and attacks upon the Church, and not just on abuses. And it’s why many of them will keep going down that destructive road right into sedevacantism, and if they keep going further and further “out”: away from orthodoxy, to the place where Gerry Matatics is now: no valid Masses at all, so why go to church anymore? I think neo-atheism is in his future. Mark my words.
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I would say the main contributions of Vatican II would be important developments in the areas of religious tolerance, ecumenism, promotion of the role of the laity, urging Catholics to share and explain the faith in ways that are more accessible and understandable to non-Catholics, and emphasis on collegiality and conciliar infallibility, while reaffirming papal infallibility. In many ways it followed the ideals of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, who is my theological hero.
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Ecumenism, to too many, is seen as antithetical to apologetics, when it is not at all. I’ve done both vigorously for over 30 years in my work and outreach efforts. Both/and . . . Various cultural factors made evangelism quite unfashionable, and those got into the Church as well, since lots of Catholics are more American than they are Catholic. If people dissed apologetics and the aspect of rational understanding of the faith, they would evangelize less, and support missions less. Also, as folks become more and more secularized, the incipient relativism of that causes them to want to share the faith less. It is seen as “proselytizing” or intolerant.
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Thus, in my opinion, the two main causes (among many) of “collapse” of missions and the schools and nuns and all the rest are secularization outside the Church (constantly seeping into the thinking of Catholics; hence the Catholic vote absurdly went for Obama twice) and Protestant-like either/or thinking within it. I vigorously reject both, which is why I’m still evangelizing and defending the faith after 24 years as a Catholic . . .
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Part of apologetics is defining terms properly and identifying those who espouse a serious error, lest others be led astray.
I think my readers want to know about a Catholic journalist who disses Vatican II and wants to “bury” it. That’s relevant information for those of us who actually respect magisterial Church teaching and authority.
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I don’t find Pope Francis’ pointed observations about reactionaries nearly as cutting and acerbic as many of Paul’s and Jesus’. There are people like the ones he describes out there. But of course, if every “traditionalist” assumes he is talking about the whole lot of them, then they wrongly assume that it is out of prejudice or falsehood, rather than as a prophetic voice of denunciation of sin.
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The same thing happened to me recently. I condemned “prophets of gloom and doom” and I was jumped all over, as supposedly tarring all “traditionalists” with this brush. I had done no such thing. I simply condemned this thing itself, wherever it occurs; from whomever. I didn’t say who was doing it, or what proportion of what group. All that was merely assumed by my critic.
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If pressed, I would say I had in mind a portion of radical Catholic reactionaries, whom I distinguish from “traditionalists.” I see that dynamic with the pope and his endless babbling critics, too. People are assuming lots of stuff that doesn’t necessarily follow at all.
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Yeah, lots of modernists and theological liberals were out and about in the 1940s-1960s. Anyone knows that. I think it had some influence on Vatican II, but not enough to make any of the documents heterodox. I believe in faith that the Holy Spirit guided the documents, just as He has all the ecumenical councils, despite all the sins, follies, and foibles of men.
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(originally posted on 16 June 2014 on Facebook)
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Photo credit: RitaE (9-5-17) [Pixabay / Pixabay license]
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August 19, 2020

August 19, 2020 By

Maike Hickson at One Peter Five, reviewed Ross Douthat’s book, To Change the Church on 5 March 2018. I want to focus on one aspect: how Douthat views Vatican II. To me this offers hard evidence that he is thinking like a reactionary in this key aspect (precisely as fellow pope-bashing author Phil Lawler has also expressed).

The clincher and dead giveaway is Douthat’s raising the notion of Vatican II being deliberately “ambiguous.” That is absolutely classic reactionary thinking about the ecumenical council. It wanted to have it both ways; it was two-faced, equivocal (in plain English: dishonest, and in the end, anti-traditional; in conflict with past Catholic tradition).

Critics of Pope Francis are now saying exactly the same thing about him: he’s sneaky, “jesuitical’; won’t say what he really means; if he expresses something orthodox, it’s a mere fooler to keep the people hoodwinked, etc., etc. What goes around, comes around.

Hickson writes, citing Douthat’s own words from the book:

While further discussing the council, Douthat shows how ambiguities were deliberately placed into its documents – “because the Council had many authors, and because many of those authors were themselves uncertain about what could be changed” (p. 23) – so that in some way, two different readings, the liberal as well as the conservative, were “in some sense intended by Vatican II.” With regard to the topic of religious liberty, for example, “there seemed to be a plainly-revised teaching, but even where there wasn’t there was a new language, and the apparent retirement of older phrases and rhetoric and forms.” Importantly, the author adds: “And this linguistic shift inevitably suggested a new teaching, to those who wished to have one, even as it stopped short of offering one outright.”

I already showed how Douthat (quite definitely) dissed Vatican II in an article almost exactly two years ago, long before this book.

Moral of the story? The bashing of Pope Francis doesn’t come from nowhere. It largely comes from an existing context of reactionary thought, in which not just Francis is severely questioned, but also Vatican II: an ecumenical council, and (increasingly), Pope Benedict, who, I recently documented, is being increasingly bashed by reactionaries also.

Thus, the reactionary sites (most notably, The Remnant, and One Peter Five) that are out there bashing the pope and rejoicing in Douthat’s and Lawler’s books, also bash Vatican II and Pope Benedict. And Lawler and Douthat bash Vatican II in addition to Pope Francis. It’s a mindset; it’s a mentality. And it’s not in line with the Mind of the Church or orthodoxy or authentic Catholic tradition.

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(originally 3-24-18 on Facebook)

Photo credit: Travis Wise (3-3-12) [Flickr / CC By 2.0 license]

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August 11, 2020

August 11, 2020 By

Reply to Timothy Flanders

Timothy Flanders, who calls himself a traditionalist (I call him a radical Catholic reactionary), is a nice guy with whom I have engaged in pleasant and friendly dialogue four times (one / two / three / four). His latest article, “Are Catholics Bound to Assent to Vatican II?” (7-30-20) was published at One Vader Five (aka One Peter Five) This is my reply. His words below will be in blue.

*****

I’ve defended Vatican II itself, in the course of my apologetics, at least 25 times; additionally, a dozen more times, in specifically addressing the many particular criticisms of Paolo Pasqualucci. I’ve also explained and defended the general notion of conciliar and Church infallibility at least 27 times, and explored the analogy of the Jerusalem Council ten times. That’s about 75 separate treatments of the topic (these all being found on my Church index page on my blog). And this doesn’t even include the related material from my 50 books (one of them devoted to Church and papal infallibility).

Thus I need not address these preliminary issues of the sublime authority of ecumenical councils (i.e., ratified by popes), to the extent that they form part of his article, nor the post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: “after this, therefore because of this”) fallacy that is rampant among reactionaries and also many legitimate traditionalists. I already have, many times.

Timothy (whom I consider a friendly acquaintance) has been dialoguing with me since July 2019. The last one was dated 2-25-20. It was my reply. I’ve been waiting almost six months, then, for Timothy’s counter-reply. He says he is very busy with his work, which is fine, and I accept the explanation. I’m simply noting for the record that my last reply has not yet been responded to. This current article is not that, since my article was far more detailed and varied in content than what he is addressing here.

I thank Timothy very much for his gentlemanly charity at the beginning of this article. It’s also true (to the converse) that very few reactionaries extend even rudimentary charity and the benefit of the doubt to us orthodox Catholics who have honest differences with them. This lack of charity is seen in the combox below already (I comment eleven days after the article was published). Just in “Random Anonymous” ‘ comment alone, readers “learn” that I am supposedly “deranged” and “jealous” and “irrelevant” and am a “hyper papalist.” My “judgment is unsound” and “viewpoints not worth airing” and I’m similar to Japanese soldiers fighting on remote islands decades after 1945.

I was also shocked (well, just a little bit) to read that the same commenter thinks the Catholic Church is “increasingly indefensible.” That is — at a minimum — merely a Protestant or Orthodox outlook, and is certainly not traditional Catholicism, and knows nothing of what “indefectibility” means or requires or entails.

Yet I am the one who is supposedly “anti-traditionalist” (I am not at all; I am anti-reactionary)? In another comment, safely anonymous Random Anonymous gets into juvenile generational bias and goes after Baby Boomers (of whom I am one). Back in 1968 when we heard talk of the “generation gap” it was said that we should “trust no one over 30.” Apparently now the magic number is 45 or over (although the Boomers go back to about 1963, which would be 57) . Some things never change. Truth remains truth, no matter who states it. Such mindless insults are a classic instance of what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.”

But I digress. I’d like to specifically tackle the analogy that Timothy submits: that Vatican II is a “failed” council like Lateran V (1512-1517) allegedly was. I love analogies (that also comes from Newman), but I think this one fails, and I shall proceed to explain why I think so.

Timothy cites Cardinal Ratzinger (later, Pope Benedict XVI), from a L’Osservatore Romano article, dated 24 December 1984:

Certainly, the results [of Vatican II] seem cruelly opposed to the expectations of everyone, beginning with those of Pope John XXIII and then of Paul VI: expected was a new Catholic unity and instead we have been exposed to dissension which — to use the words of Paul VI — seems to have gone from self-criticism to self-destruction. Expected was a new enthusiasm, and many wound up discouraged and bored. Expected was a great step forward, and instead we find ourselves faced with a progressive process of decadence which has developed for the most part precisely under the sign of a calling back to the Council, and has therefore contributed to discrediting for many. The net result therefore seems negative. I am repeating here what I said ten years after the conclusion of the work: it is incontrovertible that this period has definitely been unfavorable for the Catholic Church.

The quotation leaves the impression: “Vatican II bad!” / “Vatican II caused every evil known to man in the last fifty years!” But Timothy knows full well that Pope Benedict XVI was and is a big champion of the council, and doesn’t think it itself caused all of the bad things we observe today. Nor are “expectations” of people the equivalent of the teachings contained in the official documents. People expect and hope for all kinds of things.

The traditionalists and reactionaries hoped for a host of things that Pope Benedict (their big darling) would do, with which they agreed. But he didn’t do all of them. And what he did do, that they liked (such as extend and validate the availability of the Tridentine Mass) — which, by the way, I fully favored before he addressed it in 2007 — , didn’t go far enough for them, so that they basically are now bitterly disenchanted with him (especially after his resignation). Expressions of such crushed, disillusioned hope abound in reactionary circles.

Such comments above have to be balanced with others, lest they be misunderstood. As pope, he stated in his Christmas Greetings to the Roman Curia (12-22-05):

The question arises:  Why has the implementation of the Council, in large parts of the Church, thus far been so difficult?

Well, it all depends on the correct interpretation of the Council or – as we would say today – on its proper hermeneutics, the correct key to its interpretation and application. The problems in its implementation arose from the fact that two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarrelled with each other. One caused confusion, the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.

On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call “a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture”; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the “hermeneutic of reform”, of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.

The hermeneutic of discontinuity risks ending in a split between the pre-conciliar Church and the post-conciliar Church. It asserts that the texts of the Council as such do not yet express the true spirit of the Council. It claims that they are the result of compromises in which, to reach unanimity, it was found necessary to keep and reconfirm many old things that are now pointless. However, the true spirit of the Council is not to be found in these compromises but instead in the impulses toward the new that are contained in the texts.

These innovations alone were supposed to represent the true spirit of the Council, and starting from and in conformity with them, it would be possible to move ahead. Precisely because the texts would only imperfectly reflect the true spirit of the Council and its newness, it would be necessary to go courageously beyond the texts and make room for the newness in which the Council’s deepest intention would be expressed, even if it were still vague.

In a word:  it would be necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit. In this way, obviously, a vast margin was left open for the question on how this spirit should subsequently be defined and room was consequently made for every whim. . . .

Forty years after the Council, we can show that the positive is far greater and livelier than it appeared to be in the turbulent years around 1968. Today, we see that although the good seed developed slowly, it is nonetheless growing; and our deep gratitude for the work done by the Council is likewise growing. . . .

Those who expected that with this fundamental “yes” to the modern era all tensions would be dispelled and that the “openness towards the world” accordingly achieved would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner tensions as well as the contradictions inherent in the modern epoch.

They had underestimated the perilous frailty of human nature which has been a threat to human progress in all the periods of history and in every historical constellation. These dangers, with the new possibilities and new power of man over matter and over himself, did not disappear but instead acquired new dimensions: a look at the history of the present day shows this clearly.

Timothy, to his credit, cites this very address and concedes that Pope Benedict would not reject Vatican II at all (as he and reactionaries, generally speaking, seek to do):

But if Ratzinger could concede in the ’80s that the “net result” of Vatican II was negative, he would hasten to assert (as he would in 2005) that this is not due to the Council ontologically.

Fair and correct, but of course readers who already agree with him will remember the long “negative” citation and probably not even bother to read (or even glance at) what is in the link. And so the impression desired is left. I think that’s a bit unfair. But (as he told me) he had a 2000-word limit, so that is at least some excuse for the too one-sided presentation. I understand that (as one who regularly writes 1000-word articles for National Catholic Register). But he could have cited both statements with roughly equal numbers of words. In any event, I have no word limit on this blog, and so have the opportunity to “balance the record.”

Ratzinger seems to be speaking of the Council from a historical perspective. I read him as saying (here in 1984) that the historical effect of the Council has been negative. Thus, a historical assertion takes into account the machinations of human sin that failed to bring about what the Council intended.

Well, he was simply saying that the ideals expected by the council fathers did not work out in reality, which is how the human condition usually (well, almost always) amounts to. Catholicism  — following the Holy Scripture — represents the highest ideals known to man. It doesn’t necessarily (as a purely logical matter) follow that Vatican II was any sort of cause of the disappointing reality of post-60s decadent, perverted western culture.

It expressed truths that the secular culture simply rejected out of hand. Vatican II, after all, clearly didn’t cause or champion the sexual revolution (which is the leading force and cutting edge of ever-encroaching secularism), that really got off the ground shortly after its close. It directly opposed it, as I will document below.

Pope St. Paul VI heroically resisted the elephant in the room: the sexual revolution, in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which reasserted the traditional Catholic ban on contraception as immoral. Was the sexual revolution caused by the text of Humanae Vitae? The very thought is ridiculous. Yet this is how reactionaries “reason” when it comes to Vatican II. They become conspiratorial and utterly irrational: juxtaposing and converging ideas and events that have nothing whatever to do with each other.

Did Vatican I “cause” the Old Catholics, who rejected its definition of papal infallibility, to leave the Church? No. There are always folks who leave religious groups when developments happen that they personally don’t like. They place their private judgment above the Mind of the Church and split, having adopted the Protestant conception of authority.

Did the Council of Nicaea in 325, which carefully defined the Holy Trinity, “cause” the outbreak of Arianism, which nevertheless persisted for several more centuries, followed by Monothelitism: another Christological heresy? Of course not. But if we reasoned as reactionaries do as regards Vatican II, we would have to say that it did, since what “followed” was a truly dreadful period of Church history.

Even Trent (perhaps reactionaries’ favorite council) did not stop Protestantism at all. The Protestants obliviously went their merry way. Trent made great internal Church reforms and offered wonderful clarity about Catholic doctrine and dogma, but had little or no bearing on the continued existence and vitality of the various Protestant sects. As soon as it came out, John Calvin and the Lutheran theologian Martin Chemnitz issued attempted refutations of it (I have refuted parts of both efforts).

So do we say that Trent also “failed” and should be discarded, because it had next to no impact on lessening the big “problem” of that day: Protestant schism and heresy (where it existed)? No. It cannot be expected to have done so. Even the Bible: God’s inspired revelation, is rejected by many millions of people, and its message distorted beyond recognition in many ways by the many anti-trinitarian cults and weird sects. It’s not because it doesn’t offer pure truth.

Here we may see a parallel with Lateran V, which addressed in 1517 the question of indulgences and corruption that spring, but not enough to prevent the Protestant revolt that autumn, necessitating a whole new council. From the historical perspective, we can confidently say Lateran V was a failure. This is because its decrees were not sufficient to address the heretical explosion of Protestant fervor, 

I think this is filled with fallacies and failed analogies. The Wikipedia article on this council never even mentions the word “indulgences” as anything the council dealt with. Nor does the Catholic Encyclopedia article devoted to it. I ran across a more in-depth account of Lateran V, and it at least has the word three times, but only matter-of-factly, not in the sense that there is a big need to reform indulgences (with none even occurring in the 1517 session). It simply wasn’t one of the aims of the council.

Session 12 in 1517 occurred in March of that year. As most students of Christian history know, Martin Luther didn’t post his 95 Theses until 31 October 1517. It simply wasn’t the raging issue seven months earlier, that it was to become. So we can hardly fault Lateran V for that, since councils and apologists always deal with existing controversies, and clarify in light of them. Hence (to mention but one famous example), St. Augustine dealt with the Pelagians and Donatists because they were prevalent in his time (etc.).

Moreover, it’s inaccurate to characterize the Protestant Revolt as having been caused or driven primarily by the indulgences controversy that Luther focused on in his Theses. I’ve repeatedly dealt with this stubborn myth, and particularly with how the early Protestants were no more “pious” or “righteous” as a whole than Catholics were (even according to Luther’s own frank and disgusted reports). Some historians of the so-called “Reformation” go so far to say that it was even primarily a political movement. For example:

Medieval Catholic Corruption: Main Cause of Protestant Revolt? [6-2-03; revised slightly: 1-20-04; 10-10-17]

Luther Film (2003): Detailed Catholic Critique [10-28-03; abridged with revised links on 3-6-17]

50 Ways In Which Luther Had Departed From Catholic Orthodoxy by 1520 (and Why He Was Excommunicated) [3-29-06]

Causes of the Protestant “Reformation” (vs. a Lutheran Pastor) [11-20-07; abridged somewhat on 10-23-17]

Martin Luther: “Our manner of life is as evil as is that of the papists” [12-29-07]

Luther on Early Lutherans: “Ingrates” Who Deserve God’s “Wrath” [2-28-10]

Luther on Early Lutheran Degeneracy & Bad Witness [3-2-10]

Luther: Monks & Priests More “Earnest” Than Lutherans [11-10-11]

and its bishops lacked the courage to implement the good decrees it did contain.

Of course, this is not the fault of the council’s documents, but rather, a lack of wisdom in the policies and actions of bishops. So it’s irrelevant as to being any sort of analogous argument against Vatican II, in which case our beloved liberal dissidents sought to implement the heretical so-called “spirit” of Vatican II.

It could be reasonably asserted that Lateran V could not have predicted the chaos that would ensure. To a degree, this is true, but on the other hand, a storm was indeed seen on the horizon and was publicly warned about at the council.

Okay; nor could those who participated in Vatican II be able to imagine in their wildest dreams a society (in just ten years) where childkilling would be legalized in virtually every “developed” country (even in fairly morally traditional America), or the massive fornication, contraception (the Birth Control Pill at the end of the council being then only five years old), illegitimacy, broken homes, divorce, pornography, substance abuse, and many other social ills that would arise; or, for that matter, same-sex “marriage” supported by the Supreme Court of the United States fifty years later. These things were unimaginable.

Thus, considered from a historical perspective, we can say that Lateran V was a failure for various reasons (from the “premature” end of the Council itself to the enacting of its “salutary decrees”) to the extent that no one remembers Lateran V, and everyone remembers the successful council instead, Trent.

Apart from the naive and overly simplistic logic already noted, this is unfair to the Lateran V council. There are other views of it. For example, I fond an article entitled, “The Last Two Councils of the Catholic Reformation: The Influence of Lateran V on Trent,” by Nelson H. Minnich, a Catholic historian who later wrote the book, The Decrees of the Fifth Lateran Council (New York: Routledge, 2016) . It appeared in the volume, Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J. (Univ. of Toronto Press, 2001). Here are a few excerpts (many similar and more detailed ones appear in the article):

[It] affirmed that the pope has authority over all councils and only he can convoke, transfer, and close a council. Thus Lateran V effectively put an end to the threat of conciliarism. (p. 4)

Even if the decrees of Lateran V were not widely received and enforced, repeated references to them were made by those advocating reform. (p. 5)

The fathers of Trent . . . had access to its printed acta and carefully scrutinized them for procedural precedents and decrees supporting their vision of church reform. The procedures followed at Lateran V were often cited to justify actions taken at Trent. (p. 6)

Lateran V achieved precisely what it can reasonably be expected to have achieved: reform of Church practice and development of Church doctrine, just as every other ecumenical council, including Vatican II has done.

We may observe as well that just like at Lateran V, multiple voices were raised in warning about the effects of Vatican II and the gravity of the storm of sexual revolution, most of all Our Lady herself at Fatima, but these warnings were ignored or literally silenced and mocked by the majority faction at Vatican II (led in part by Ratzinger). Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assert on the historical level that, similar to Lateran V, the Second Vatican Council failed to “read the signs of the times” and thought the world was on the dawn of a new age of Christianity, instead of the reality of a new darkness of pornographic filth, mass murder of unborn children, and a worldwide clerical revolt in favor of contraception.

Vatican II dealt with these issues in Gaudium et Spes, Part Two, Chapter 1: ‘The Dignity of Marriage and the Family”: sections 47-52: taking up some nine pages in the Flannery edition. That’s not nothing. It spoke truth and was not heeded, just as the papal encyclical Casti Connubii did in 1930 (responding to the Anglican caving on contraception in the same year: the first Christian body ever to do so) and was largely ignored, and just as Humanae Vitae did three years later and was mocked and massively dissented against. “Heresy begins below the belt.”

The fault doesn’t lie in the documents, but in the rebellion of the rebels. If Vatican II is to be blamed, then so must these other two documents be blamed as somehow “negligent.” It’s a bum rap all around. If we want to play the “analogy game” there we are. Here are excerpts from this portion of Gaudium (with my bolding for emphasis):

47. The well-being of the individual person and of human and Christian society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of that community produced by marriage and family. Hence Christians and all men who hold this community in high esteem sincerely rejoice in the various ways by which men today find help in fostering this community of love and perfecting its life, and by which parents are assisted in their lofty calling. Those who rejoice in such aids look for additional benefits from them and labour to bring them about.

Yet the excellence of this institution is not everywhere reflected with equal brilliance, since polygamy, the plague of divorce, so-called free love and other disfigurements have an obscuring effect. In addition, married love is too often profaned by excessive self-love, the worship of pleasure and illicit practices against human generation.

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48. . . . As a mutual gift of two persons, this intimate union and the good of the children impose total fidelity on the spouses and argue for an unbreakable oneness between them. . . .

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49. . . . Such love, merging the human with the divine, leads the spouses to a free and mutual gift of themselves, a gift providing itself by gentle affection and by deed; such love pervades the whole of their lives: indeed by its busy generosity it grows better and grows greater. Therefore it far excels mere erotic inclination, which, selfishly pursued, soon enough fades wretchedly away. . . .

***

50. Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents. The God Himself Who said, “it is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18) and “Who made man from the beginning male and female” (Matt. 19:4), wishing to share with man a certain special participation in His own creative work, blessed male and female, saying: “Increase and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). Hence, while not making the other purposes of matrimony of less account, the true practice of conjugal love, and the whole meaning of the family life which results from it, have this aim: that the couple be ready with stout hearts to cooperate with the love of the Creator and the Saviour, Who through them will enlarge and enrich His own family day by day. . . .

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51. . . . For God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing ministry of safeguarding life in a manner which is worthy of man. Therefore from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes. The sexual characteristics of man and the human faculty of reproduction wonderfully exceed the dispositions of lower forms of life. Hence the acts themselves which are proper to conjugal love and which are exercised in accord with genuine human dignity must be honoured with great reverence.

Hence when there is question of harmonizing conjugal love with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards. These, based on the nature of the human person and his acts, preserve the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love. Such a goal cannot be achieved unless the virtue of conjugal chastity is sincerely practiced. Relying on these principles, sons of the Church may not undertake methods of birth control which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority of the Church in its unfolding of the divine law.

[Footnote: 14. Cf. Pius XI, encyclical letter Casti Connubii: AAS 22 ( 1930): Denz- Schoen. 3716-3718; Pius XII, Allocutio Conventui Unionis Italicae inter Obstetrices, Oct. 29, 1951: AAS 43 (1951), PP. 835-854, Paul VI, address to a group of cardinals, June 23 1964: AAS 56 (1964), PP. 581-589. Certain questions which need further and more careful investigation have been handed over, at the command of the Supreme Pontiff, to a commission for the study of population, family, and births, in order that, after it fulfills its function, the Supreme Pontiff may pass judgment. With the doctrine of the magisterium in this state, this holy synod does not intend to propose immediately concrete solutions.]

I fail to see how this ignores the key aspects of the sexual revolution. It mentions and condemns all of them. There is nothing wrong in this analysis at all. It’s beautiful and profound. Pope St. Paul VI expanded upon it three years later, just as the footnote above foresaw. And Pope St. John Paul II blessed the Church and Catholic theology with his magnificent teachings on the theology of the body, which is no less than an extraordinary and exciting development in moral theology in our own time.

Rather than rejoice in those gifts to the Church, reactionaries would rather spend their energies (I have observed this myself, again and again) objecting to the canonization of both men (and Taylor Marshall even outrageously suggests in his pathetic book that Pope St. Paul VI had an ongoing homosexual lover). Timothy praises the “academic rigor of the traditionalist [i.e., reactionary] scholars such as De Mattei, Romano, and Ferrara” in his footnote #1. The first and last of these fought against the canonization of the three recent saint-popes:

Pope Bergoglio’s rapid-fire canonizations of John Paul II and John XXIII have understandably contributed to growing concerns among the faithful about the reliability of the “saint factory” put into operation during the reign of John Paul II. . . .

But now the seemingly imminent canonization of Paul VI, following approval of two purported miracles which, based on the information published, seem decidedly less than miraculous (to be discussed in Part II of this series), has provoked widespread incredulity about the canonization process itself, going even beyond the skepticism that greeted the canonizations of John XXIII and John Paul II.

. . . concerns of Roberto de Mattei over Pope Bergoglio’s canonization of John Paul II and John XXIII . . . (Chris Ferrara, “The Canonization Crisis, Part 1”: The Remnant, 2-24-18)

See also, “True and False Saints in the Church” (10-19-18), by Roberto de Mattei, who cites Ferrara.

God help us all! Like the Pharisees of old, reactionaries can’t see what is right in front of them: the “weightier matters,” as Jesus called them.

Most of the rest of the article was simply reiterations of the basic theme, which I believe I have shown to be profoundly fallacious and sadly mistaken.

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Photo credit: Anne Worner: “BoogeyMan” (12-6-14) [Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 license]

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July 16, 2020

July 16, 2020 By

[note: the title of this paper is a generalization; not meant to imply that there are no exceptions, but rather, to express a strong correlation]

 

As I’ve been saying for many years now, the endless lies about Pope Francis are almost always accompanied by “anti-Vatican II, anti-Ordinary Form Mass, and anti-ecumenism”: the four hallmarks of radical Catholic reactionaries.
 
I wrote eight months ago: “as always in these matters, ‘it ain’t just about Pope Francis.’ These people have had a dangerous, quasi-schismatic mentality and agenda for many years before anyone had ever heard of Pope Francis.”
 
And so I have been pointing out for over twenty years that these four things go together. The “Francis is a heretic” mantra is just a front and a subterfuge: as if that is all these radicals oppose, much as “Black Lives Matter” is a mere front for far-left revolutionary activism.
 
This worthless reactionary garbage we hear now can be directly traced to Chris Ferrara (of The Remnant) and his gossipy, destructive book, The Great Facade in 2002 (2nd edition: 2015). Note that that was eleven years before Pope Francis, and even three before Pope Benedict XVI. It’s the reactionary Bible. Taylor Marshall simply took that ball and ran with it further (“upped the ante”), into additional mindless conspiracy theories and outrageously scandalous, slanderous charges like, for example, that Pope St. Paul VI had an ongoing sodomite lover (an Italian actor).
 
“Nothing new under the sun,” as Ecclesiastes noted some 3000 years ago. Ferrara offered the slop of warmed-over Lefebvrism, and today’s radical quasi-schismatics like Dr. Marshall and Abp. Vigano offer warmed-over “Ferrarism.”
*
I’ve been trying to educate and warn people that the continual group statements against the pope are basically the same set of disenchanted reactionaries, who believe in the defectibility of the Church or at least — typical of reactionary equivocation and game-playing with words and dogmas — a quasi-defectibility (Church dogma tells us that the Church is indefectible). Here are my papers documenting this phenomenon of a small group of reactionaries trying to make themselves appear much larger and more important and influential than they actually are:
*
Radical Reactionary Affinities in “Filial Correction” Signatories [9-28-17]
*Reactionary Influence: Correctio & June 2016 Criticism of the Pope [1-24-18]*
*

Ecclesiological Errors of “Easter Letter” Reactionaries Summed Up (That is, Ones Not Specifically Related to Pope Francis: Especially Vatican II as the Big Bad Wolf) [5-9-19]

Now the latest “joint statement” is the Open Letter to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and Bishop Athanasius Schneider (July 9, 2020): a wholesale attack on the sublime magisterial authority of Vatican II. It was signed by 50 people. With just a cursory glance at the signatories, I found 19 or so that were familiar to me as having signed one or more of the documents above. And they include (not surprisingly) Christopher Ferrara.

The saddest one (to me) is Dr. Janet Smith: an excellent moral theologian (specializing in defense of Humanae Vitae) who has recently descended into reactionaryism, to the extent that she is now in favor of improper and quasi-schismatic criticism of an ecumenical council. How very sad. It’s a case study of a person who is far better than some false beliefs she has fallen prey to. I tried to persuade her otherwise, months ago, to no avail:

Viganò, Schneider, Pachamama, & VCII (vs. Janet E. Smith) [11-25-19]

*
*

For my part, I have repeatedly defended Vatican II as fully in line with previous Catholic tradition; particularly in a twelve-part reply to Dr. Paolo Pasqualucci: whose name also appears on this latest farcical document. Many other defenses of it may be found on my Catholic Church web page (word-search for the section: “Ecclesiastical Authority: The Second Vatican Council”).

The ubiquitous Dr. Peter Kwasniewski signed it. I have debated him several times in writing:

Dialogue with a Traditionalist Regarding Deaconesses (vs. Dr. Peter Kwasniewski) [5-13-16]

“Postconciliar” Reply to Peter Kwasniewski & John Lamont [6-10-19]

Taylor Marshall associate Timothy Flanders appears also. I have debated him as well (and he says he wants to continue, time-permitting):
*
Reply to Timothy Flanders’ Defense of Taylor Marshall [7-8-19]

Dialogue w Ally of Taylor Marshall, Timothy Flanders [7-17-19]

Dialogue w 1P5 Writer Timothy Flanders: Introduction [2-1-20]

Dialogue w Timothy Flanders #2: State of Emergency? [2-25-20]

Alexander Tschugguel, Taylor Marshall, & God’s Wrath [3-19-20]

And, of course, I’m probably the biggest orthodox Catholic critic of Taylor Marshall (who banned me from his Twitter page upon my very first critique, after having recommended my books and website for many years). See numerous critiques under his name on my Traditionalist & Reactionaries web page.

Leila Lawler appears: wife of Phil Lawler, whose book Lost Shepherd I have critiqued 21 times (see his section on my Papacy page). I noted how Phil was starting to question — to some extent — Vatican II, himself, almost three years ago now. So here we are, observing his wife signing this document. No surprise to me! It’s part of my job as an apologist to keep track of these aberrations.

Henry Sire is on the list. I critiqued his book, The Dictator Pope.

I’ve had several exchanges with Chris Ferrara (almost always typified by his obnoxious mockery and ad hominem attacks), or regarding The Remnant:

Debate on the Reactionary Group, The Remnant [1-24-00]

Critique of The Remnant [2000]

Critique of Chris Ferrara’s Radical Reactionary Hit-Piece in Opposition to Pope Francis’ Christian Environmentalism [6-20-15]

Chris Ferrara vs. Pope Benedict XVI (New Mass) [12-18-15]

Reactionary Chris Ferrara’s Lies Re Pope Francis & Hell [3-31-18]

Coronavirus: Chris Ferrara vs. Science & Historical Precedent (Social Distancing Was Used in the 1918 Flu Pandemic and Has Been Shown Again and Again to be Highly Effective) [4-7-20]

And I have severely criticized Abp. Viganò and Bp. Schneider many times.

And so on and on it goes. I called all this and predicted it: basically 20 years ago. Remember, these four things are almost always found together:

1) Pope-Bashing (and not just of Francis, but from Pope st. John XXIII onward).

2) Vatican II-bashing.

3) Ordinary Form / Pauline / “New” Mass-bashing.

4) Ecumenism-bashing (falsely making out that all ecumenism is indifferentist relativism).

And a word to the wise: if you see these things, avoid them like the plague. It’ll do you no spiritual or theological good. And it won’t because these things run counter to the teaching of Holy Mother Church: whom God appointed as the Guardian of your souls. Don’t do it! I’m here as an apologist to warn you against error and to help you on your spiritual journey.

I’m not rich; I have no monetary or any other personal interest in saying these things (in fact, I have had to suffer loss for saying them). I do solely because they are true and good and because I care about people, and have observed what has happened to many good people through the years who have fallen into these grave errors. It’s part of my job.

2 Timothy 4:1-8 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: [2] preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. [3] For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, [4] and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths. [5] As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry. [6] For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. [7] I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. [8] Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.
*
2 Timothy 3:1-9 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. [2] For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, [3] inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, [4] treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, [5] holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. [6] For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, [7] who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. [8] As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith; [9] but they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.
***
Photo credit: image from the book’s Amazon page (original edition from 2002).
***
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