April 2013
Pride and Delusion
“The media gave a distorted picture of the Second Vatican Council.
Now the real spirit of Vatican II needs to be examined.”
So Benedict XVI went down swinging in defence of his beloved Council. Quelle surprise! It was, after all, the culmination of his life's thought and work at the service of the Nouvelle Théologie.
In keeping with his "reputation [at the Council] for being a radical progressivist," as his Lutheran friend Oscar Cullmann fondly recalled, the suit-and-tie-wearing Father Ratzinger had been suspected of heresy by the Holy Office. He was even forced to rewrite a post-doctoral dissertation littered with his nouvelles propositions et ambiguïtés; neo-Modernist views which finally broke through in le verbiage pastoral of Vatican II that was to serve his stated purpose: "an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789." Finally, after benighted millennia, the light was dawning. But then, like every false utopian dawn since Eden, it all fell apart. Surfing the tidal wave of la Révolution catholique, rebellious clerics wiped out every fixed reference point of Catholic faith and life; their self-indulgent novelties crashing like giant breakers over the faithful and dumping the Body of Christ in a wild sea of endless "change" for change's sake.
Rather than take manful responsibility, the liberal vanguard ploughed on: defending the indefensible; blaming everybody but themselves for the cataclysmic fallout (which their Thomistic teachers, like Fr Garrigou-Lagrange, repeatedly forewarned). And so, on 16 February, finger-pointing to the bitter end, Comrade Benedict informed the priestly proles of Rome that
The world interpreted the Council through the eyes of the media instead of seeing the real Council of the Fathers and of faith ... The journalists’ interpretation of the Council is different, it is political... The Council was violently trivialised and it was seen outside the context of faith.
Au contraire ex-Holy Father: "the real Council" was quickly identified by intellectual giants like Dietrich von Hildebrand as a revolutionary instrument of the Nouveaux Théologiens. Fifty disastrous years on, only those with a stake in that anti-Thomistic revolt deny the fact; seeking easy scapegoats for their destructive handiwork. For all its wickedness, however, it was not the sinful media but the sins of vapid churchmen that "violently trivialised" an Ecumenical Council of the Church. Just as it was restless pride —the besetting Modernist sin — that put the Council "outside the context of faith" and tied it to the zeitgeist. And since the child of revolutionary pride (personified by Robespierre) is Terror, it was that spirit — radiating from pastoral ambiguities to incite the terrifying Cult of Novelty — which laid waste to the Western Church with the blessing of complacent shepherds.
"Seminaries were closed, convents were closed, liturgy trivialized…." Reeling off the carnage and delusional disclaimers in turn, Benedict insisted that "the virtual Council was stronger than the real Council." But not to worry. Despite “so much calamity, so many problems,really so much misery,” he assured his captive audience that “50 years later… the strength of the real Council has been revealed."
Well, insofar as the "real Council" is the Trojan Horse in the City of God exposed by von Hildebrand just two years after its conclusion, its subversive power "has been revealed" — prodigiously! Yet we are stymied. For if ex-Benedict remains in stubborn denial about that réalité révolutionnaire, so do his cardinalatial peers: the nouvelles-Mods & nouveaux-Cons casting their first papal ballots as we go to press. Ergo, regardless of their choice, fabricated renewal tailored to the fabricated era "inaugurated in 1789" will likely power on; until such time as it peters out and we end up back at the counter-revolutionary default setting for all genuine renewal and reform — Tradition organique.
Mercifully, prominent mainstream theologians, historians and intellectuals are attacking the contrived status quo as never before. This discontent will gather and grow until the Trojan Horse-cum-Elephant in the room can no longer be ignored, and Pope John's ill-advised, revolutionary Council is wound back and wound up.
Meanwhile, the ensuing articles — especially Dr Rao's historical reflections, and Dr Hickson's fresh approach to the milieu which surrounded and inordinately permeated the commencement of Vatican II — help to place our recent past, troubling present, and worrisome future, in Providential perspective.