Or, more specifically: What Does a Future Traditional Pope Do With Vatican II? First we must tackle these two questions: Was Vatican II inspired by the Holy Spirit? and/or Did Vatican II come from God? Before people get nervous about my answer, please realize that I’m going to give three answers and only eliminate one of those three as illogical. Here’s the three answers to the two above questions in bold:
- Yes, Vatican II entirely came from God in the 1960s.
- Kind of—some aspects of Vatican II came from God and some didn’t. It was unfortunately weaponized ambiguity and so we have to sift out the errors and keep the orthodox statements.
- Vatican II was not from God and it has to be put in the trash heap of Catholic Church history.
The first answer would obviously belong to modernists or progressivists. The second would belong to neo-con non-trad Catholics and some traditionalists. The third belongs to some traditionalists.
But notice I just said that traditionalists are split between #2 and #3. For example, a traditional bishop who we will call “Bishop A” believes that Vatican II has some errors, but he hopes a future Pope might salvage certain aspects of what he personally finds orthodox in the many documents of Vatican II. This he could do while dismissing the ambiguous or even modernist paragraphs but keeping the kosher ones. However, another traditional bishop who we will call “Bishop V” holds a more severe view as seen in #3 above: Basically, the errors of Vatican II are too great to keep it in the annals of the Catholic Church at all. Like the false-synod of Pistoia, it will have to be abrogated by the Holy See in the future (that is—if we are not at the end of the world.)
I am going to now give two reasons why the second view is impractical and theologically untenable.
First of all, it is impractical to say that a Council that affected a billion Catholics could be semi-retrofitted for future generations. That view is overly intellectual and does not account for the fact that Catholics from Peru to China now follow the completely overhauled facets of religion following Vatican II. By facets, I mean Catholics all over the world appropriated a new Mass, a new calendar, a new way of confessing, a new catechism, a new set of saints, a new way of evangelizing, a new way of interfacing with the world and a new view of ecumenism. As I have demonstrated before, these “changes” tanked the numbers of Catholics across the world from Africa to the United States.
Although uneducated Catholics may not be able to debate the questions on religious liberty that are debated in traditional circles, no one (not even Bishop A.) could deny the fact that your average rural Catholic in Nigeria or urban Catholic in Hong Kong has a totally new way of worshipping at the Novus Ordo Missae than his or her ancestors did at the Traditional Latin Mass (as well as the other ancient six sacraments.) How does Bishop A account for the fact that 99% of the Catholics in the world now have a completely inverted understanding of heaven and hell versus how our grandparents saw salvation?
A line from Nostra Ætate reads: “The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men.”—Nostra Ætate #3. I am sure that Bishop A and Bishop V (and me, for what it’s worth) all agree that Catholics do not worship the same God as Muslims. That is a clear and present error in the documents of Vatican II. So, the practical question becomes: What does a future traditional Pope do with such errors? Bishop V. wants a future Pope to fully abrogate Vatican II. But Bishop A. wants to keep the good and sideline the bad of Vatican II. I say: The problem with the latter (namely, keeping the traditional while ferreting-out the unorthodox) is that it is practically impossible.
For example, imagine a Catholic high school in New York City in the year 2103. Imagine the Catholic Church miraculously got a traditional Pope in 2058 who did what Bishop A suggests. How would those high school students in NYC discuss “the Council” that changed how nearly all of their grandparents believed and worshipped in the 20th and 21st century? Do these kids then have to go through Nostra Ætate paragraph-by-paragraph and learn which sentence is orthodox and which is heretical? This is impossible to execute at the catechetical level.
Will new converts in Africa and China in that same imaginary year all have to learn why their grandparents were taught there is indeed salvation outside the Catholic Church but now (AD 2103) we have a traditional Pope who says there is no salvation outside of the Catholic Church? How to answer such confusion? Will we sit down the African catechumens in the brush just before baptism and tell them which paragraphs of Vatican II are Catholic and which paragraphs of Vatican II are not Catholic? Obviously, the notion that we weed out the heresy of Vatican II but keep the rest of its accidentally-orthodox paragraphs is a proposition held only by intellectuals. It would never work for any of us teaching the faith at the grassroots level.
Here is another problem: If the Catholic Church is the spotless bride of Christ, how can she produce brackish water? In other words, if Vatican II truly came from God via the Catholic Church, we need to take the view of progressives that this complete and total overhaul of our faith and sacraments (which took place in the 1960s) had its source directly and completely in God. Why? Because the infallible Catholic Church cannot produce error or confusion. The spotless Bride of Christ cannot produce spotty Councils like Vatican II. Thus, Vatican II is either all-good or all-bad.
Many who prefer #2 would object to my above paragraph with something like this: “But Fr. Nix, past Councils had confusion and these took decades to hammer out. Such confusion—and even wars—followed dogmatic Councils that are accepted by Bishop A. and Bishop V. and even you. You should feel lucky we didn’t have a war following Vatican II.”
Indeed, many such Catholics believe the only requirement of an Ecumenical Council is that it be called by a Pope and many or all of the bishops attend it. However, the late Fr. Hesse completely disproves that theory with simple Church history: Nearly all of the first eight Ecumenical Councils were called by Roman Emperors (not Roman Popes.) In fact, a Pope was missing from two of the initial eight Ecumenical Councils. Thus, an Ecumenical Council is part of the Extraordinary Magisterium not by the presence of a Pope, but by the very fact it defines dogma or anathematizes heresy.
Now that we have the correct definition established of what it means to be an Ecumenical Council, notice that even though John XXIII and Paul VI erroneously name Vatican II as “an ecumenical council,” they nevertheless admit that Vatican II was neither to promote infallible definitions, nor to make dogmatic pronouncements against error:
-“There will be no infallible definitions. All that was done by former Councils. That is enough.”—Pope John XXIII (Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, October 11, 1962)
-“The magisterium of the Church did not wish to pronounce itself under the form of extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements…. ”—Pope Paul VI, discourse closing Vatican II, December 7, 1965.
Again, a true Ecumenical Council must either define doctrine or condemn errors. Thus, Vatican II does not fit the bill, meaning it did not have the protection of the Holy Spirit of an Ecumenical Council. Therefore, all these modern lists which normally contain Vatican II as one of the 21 Ecumenical Councils should actually be listed as only 20. (Watch the video of Fr. Hesse above if you doubt this.)
Most importantly, however, realize that the spotless Bride of Christ cannot produce error. Thus, the mealy-mouthed suggestion that future Popes need to “kind-of” keep Vatican II around while “kind-of” trashing it is theologically irresponsible and practically untenable and it has no precedent in 2000 years of Church history. You must either come to the conclusion that Vatican II totally came from God (like 95% of the world’s bishops and priests currently hold) or maintain it was the fulfillment of what many who read the Third Secret have alluded to: “A Bad Council and a Bad Mass.”
But the fence-riding must stop because we are too late in the game of two faiths occupying one Church for this confusion on the salvation of souls to go on any longer.