|
Post by assisi on Nov 8, 2010 21:49:25 GMT
The illegitimate use of "Spirit of Vatican II" is best understood if we refer to two interpretations. The first, which I would call "orthodox" and others would call "conservative" is the "hemeneutic of continuity". This holds that the Council should be interpreted with reference to previous doctrine and practice. The second is "the hermeneutic of rupture" which exists in various forms, some milder versions being compatible with orthodoxy. The most radical version would hold that the essence of Vatican II lies in breaking with previous forms of Catholicism - a sort of ecclesiastical Maoist belief in cultural revolution. The first paragraph of Lumen Gentium would seem to favour the idea of the 'hemeneutic of continuity': 1. Christ is the Light of nations. Because this is so, this Sacred Synod gathered together in the Holy Spirit eagerly desires, by proclaiming the Gospel to every creature,(1) to bring the light of Christ to all men, a light brightly visible on the countenance of the Church. Since the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race, it desires now to unfold more fully to the faithful of the Church and to the whole world its own inner nature and universal mission. This it intends to do following faithfully the teaching of previous councils. The present-day conditions of the world add greater urgency to this work of the Church so that all men, joined more closely today by various social, technical and cultural ties, might also attain fuller unity in Christ.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Dec 26, 2010 14:43:30 GMT
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=441An interesting discussion of Modernism in the context of a Jesuit's book on the post-Vatican II changes, which does appear to be modernist. HEre are some extracts which discuss the Modernist mindset - read the whole thing at the link above. The assumptions are very similar to those of Garry O'Sullivan, Louise Fuller etc EXTRACTS ...Conclusions First Though Fr. Massa offers universal conclusions, his examples are drawn from the history of the Church in the United States. Those long involved in the battles over Church renewal will recognize the pattern. The book focuses on liturgical changes (orchestrated largely by Fr. Frederick McManus), the widespread rejection of the Church’s teaching against contraception in Humanae Vitae and the succeeding battle with Fr. Charles Curran of Catholic University, the controversy over the direction of the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters in Los Angeles, the Berrigan brothers and the Catonsville Nine, and Avery Dulles’ models of the Church. But it really doesn’t matter what examples Fr. Massa cites; these are merely famous cases to illustrative a general trend, and it is something else entirely to proclaim the trend good. Here everything is used to justify a belief which Fr. Massa has actually adopted a priori—not only that changing historical consciousness is inevitable but that whatever attitudes, beliefs and behaviors emerge from it must therefore be right. Any schoolboy could spot the fallacy in a heartbeat, but Fr. Massa apparently feels duty-bound to offer three lessons: First, “it seems highly unlikely that historical consciousness—the awareness that everything, including the Church, changes as history unfolds—can ever be effectively explained away again” (158). Second, “the widespread acceptance of the seemingly self-evident truth that things change will make it increasingly difficult to propound or defend Church teaching and practice by appealing to timeless, static categories of propositional truth” (159). Third, the categories of “liberal” and “conservative” that have plagued the post-conciliar Church are not helpful because they interfere with getting on with the job of accepting the validity of the historical-consciousness paradigm, which is this: From the first, “disruption, discontinuity, and evolution [were] part of the very fiber of the Catholic tradition. Change was not foreign to Catholic tradition; it defined it” (162). I have offered the author’s conclusions first because it is clear that they constitute a belief-system independent of analysis. For an author so in awe of changing historical consciousness, the reader is surprised to find that nothing at all has changed in Fr. Massa’s mind since about 1965. All Fr. Massa has done is to give a contemporary voice to the theory of Modernism, which holds that doctrines of faith and morals ultimately flow not from Revelation but from the religious consciousness of each epoch. In the Modernist view, there is no reason to suppose that Catholics of one era will come up with the same answers to life’s pressing questions as those in another era. We may, if we like, give a nod to Modernism for understanding what it takes no special wit to understand—that what happens happens. But it takes a huge leap of faith to assert that what happens is always lock, stock and barrel what God wants. The more significant questions are whether something should have happened, whether it happened without moral fault, whether it pleased God that it happened, whether what happened is salutary, whether it calls for celebration or conversion, and whether, in the last analysis, we are to form our judgments based on how a new culture interprets God’s will, or rather on a direct Revelation from God which somehow transcends culture. It is the answer to these questions that ought to determine our response to change. Unfortunately, Modernism’s revelation is historical consciousness. It may aptly be described as theology by happenstance. It is the very antithesis of Christianity, for Christianity provides man with the ability he craves to transcend the limitations of his historical environment. The Grain of Truth Modernists lament certain features of the Church in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and this lament has just enough truth in it to make Modernist theory appear plausible to the uninitiated. The problem is that the Church was often intellectually reactionary during this period. One can well understand why, for she had been battered unceasingly by an increasingly secular European ethos for the past hundred years or so, and her leaders were habituated to their own splendid system of thought, a system based largely on the Thomist synthesis which had been so effectively expounded in official Catholic circles since the counter-reformation. There was still a very strong sense that Europe was fundamentally Christian and that lost ground could be recovered by pushing back. The Church therefore had a marked tendency to defend those who defended her and condemn those who attacked her. She allied herself too often with what we may term the “old order”, and was too little open to what could be said in favor of new approaches. This was true politically, socially and theologically. Just as ecclesiastical authority had a marked tendency to favor the aristocracy over the working classes, so too it had a marked tendency to condemn theological work which moved outside the scholastic box. Pope Leo XIII began to shift the social outlook of the Church decisively in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, but it took longer for the Holy Office to take a more even-handed approach to the more creative thinkers of the Catholic world, those who tried to emphasize neglected areas of study or deploy modern insights to explore Revelation in new ways. Just as Newman had been distrusted in Rome for some time in the 19th century, though he was ultimately vindicated before he died, so too did remarkable theologians such as Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac occasion suspicion in Rome because of their interest in revivifying Catholic thought by returning to the sources, instead of always arguing within the highly formalistic scholastic framework. There was a lot of Modernism going around in the late 19th and early 20th century, and it was justly and repeatedly condemned. But not everybody who thought outside the box was a Modernist... What this means, especially in the overall context of the book, is not that the Church ought always to try to explain her teachings in as convincing a manner as possible, but that if she cannot explain them in a manner convincing to the Faithful, she has failed in an essential obligation. Further, this failure invalidates her doctrine, and removes any corresponding obligation on the part of the Faithful to follow it. For as Fr. Mark Massa knows full well, Charles Curran did not get in trouble for arguing that the Church ought to work hard to come up with better arguments against contraception. He got into trouble because he refused to agree with the Magisterial judgment that, on God’s own authority, contraception is immoral. In this the Church imitates Our Lord, for Jesus Christ did not insist that we understand everything the Father has revealed. In fact, He never seemed overly concerned that scholars often struggled intellectually with what He had to say. But He did expect them to recognize the signs of His authority, and so to receive everything He taught as a liberating truth. Ultimately for the Modernist there is nothing transcendent about Christianity, nothing timeless, nothing true always and everywhere, nothing eternal, nothing you can take to the bank in the economy of salvation. The sole criterion for orthodoxy is always orthopraxis. What is true is simply how people live. Revelation cannot serve as a guide to human history from the transcendent Author of history. No, Revelation is only whatever we discern as good in our own time and place. Once again let me state the obvious. Modernism is theology by happenstance. And this makes it the ultimate theology of convenience for the decadent West. If you wish to identify with the cultural mainstream, there is no better tactic than to make the cultural mainstream your source of Revelation.
|
|
|
Post by assisi on Dec 27, 2010 12:05:33 GMT
Hibernicus, a very good post! As regards the author's quoted assertion that “disruption, discontinuity, and evolution [were] part of the very fiber of the Catholic tradition. Change was not foreign to Catholic tradition; it defined it”.......surely this idea is flawed. In the early centuries of the Church there would naturally have been more 'disruption' as the Church's teachings spread to new countries and peoples, had to be copied and agreed so that it could be communicated and faced down early heresies. But to expect that the it would be healthy for the Church to be in some way consistently in a state of disruption cannot be. Surely after almost 2000 years, from the apostles, Church fathers, Augustine and Aquinas, countless Popes, through to recent Catholic philosophers and apologists we should expect that we at least have a settled and consolidated deposit of faith. If we had not, then we would have turned out back on the acquired wisdom of so many believers over so many years.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Dec 27, 2010 14:14:33 GMT
The author (as distinct fro the misguided Fr Massa) is not necessarily saying that disruption is healthy but that it happens and the question is how we should respond to it. I suggest you read Cardinal Newman's ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. The view that theology was "finished" at a certain point and need not undergo further development is much more characteristic of the Eastern Orthodox than of the Catholic tradition - the question is how do we distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate developments, and developments and restatements of doctrine often arise specifically in response to new heresies, that is as an answer to disruptions; just as some of the great saints grow in spiritual insight through the pain and suffering which are the fate of all of us.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jun 26, 2011 18:00:38 GMT
An interesting piece by Leon Podles on the extent to which many liberal Catholics in the US have discarded the Catholic concepts of priesthood and the sacramental system. I suspect similar attitudes are more widespread here than we realise - they certainly seem implicit in some of the criticisms of DOMINUS IESUS' statement that the Protestant denominations are not churches in the same sense as the Catholics and Orthodox, and in a lot of the looser talk about "clericalism" as the problem. www.podles.org/dialogue/two-religions-in-one-church-465.htm#more-465
|
|
|
Post by annie on Jul 17, 2011 19:27:48 GMT
The illegitimate use of "Spirit of Vatican II" is best understood if we refer to two interpretations. The first, which I would call "orthodox" and others would call "conservative" is the "hemeneutic of continuity". This holds that the Council should be interpreted with reference to previous doctrine and practice. The second is "the hermeneutic of rupture" which exists in various forms, some milder versions being compatible with orthodoxy. The most radical version would hold that the essence of Vatican II lies in breaking with previous forms of Catholicism - a sort of ecclesiastical Maoist belief in cultural revolution. (Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution in China and the wreckovation of church buildings - a recent FURROW has a wreckovator proclaiming that to accomodate the Spirit of the Age's understanding of liturgy as communal meal, ALL churches MUST be wreckovated regardless of trouble and expense so that the altar, sorry table is placed in the centre - might be worth pursuing.) In this context the "Spirit of vatican II" is the entity to which one appeals when confronted with uncomfortably conservative passages in the Council documents. A fine example of the "hermeneutic of rupture" is the line now being pushed by Fr. Jerome Murphy O'Connor and taken up enthusiastically by the IRISH CATHOLIC, that Jesus did not found a separate priestly order and that in the first century Mass was simply said by heads of households. This is usually accompanied by ridicule of the traditional Orthodox, Catholic and even Anglican view that the triple order of bishop, priest and deacon is divinely instituted, and completely passing over what is to be said in its favour (not least that it is already there in the second-century Apostolic Fathers, some of whom claim direct apostolic authority for it. Prior to Vatican II proponents of such views would have been invited to betake themselves to the Baptists or similar denominations more congenial to this view; now they are allowed to poison the pool of Catholic discourse. The IRISH CATHOLIC has gone completely overboard on this IMHO; they are so exercised against clericalism (i.e. the view that priests' spiritual role should place their temporal actions beyond criticism) that they seem to be denying the hierarchical nature of the Church altogether. This is a pity, because some good stuff can still be found in the IRISH CATHOLIC despite the interminable drivel of Aidan Matthews and the like. I was wondering why 'clericalism' was being blamed for the problems in Cloyne. The penny has dropped!
|
|
|
Post by annie on Jul 17, 2011 20:03:03 GMT
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/articles.cfm?id=441An interesting discussion of Modernism in the context of a Jesuit's book on the post-Vatican II changes, which does appear to be modernist. HEre are some extracts which discuss the Modernist mindset - read the whole thing at the link above. The assumptions are very similar to those of Garry O'Sullivan, Louise Fuller etc EXTRACTS ...Conclusions First Though Fr. Massa offers universal conclusions, his examples are drawn from the history of the Church in the United States. Those long involved in the battles over Church renewal will recognize the pattern. The book focuses on liturgical changes (orchestrated largely by Fr. Frederick McManus), the widespread rejection of the Church’s teaching against contraception in Humanae Vitae and the succeeding battle with Fr. Charles Curran of Catholic University, the controversy over the direction of the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters in Los Angeles, the Berrigan brothers and the Catonsville Nine, and Avery Dulles’ models of the Church. But it really doesn’t matter what examples Fr. Massa cites; these are merely famous cases to illustrative a general trend, and it is something else entirely to proclaim the trend good. Here everything is used to justify a belief which Fr. Massa has actually adopted a priori—not only that changing historical consciousness is inevitable but that whatever attitudes, beliefs and behaviors emerge from it must therefore be right. Any schoolboy could spot the fallacy in a heartbeat, but Fr. Massa apparently feels duty-bound to offer three lessons: First, “it seems highly unlikely that historical consciousness—the awareness that everything, including the Church, changes as history unfolds—can ever be effectively explained away again” (158). Second, “the widespread acceptance of the seemingly self-evident truth that things change will make it increasingly difficult to propound or defend Church teaching and practice by appealing to timeless, static categories of propositional truth” (159). Third, the categories of “liberal” and “conservative” that have plagued the post-conciliar Church are not helpful because they interfere with getting on with the job of accepting the validity of the historical-consciousness paradigm, which is this: From the first, “disruption, discontinuity, and evolution [were] part of the very fiber of the Catholic tradition. Change was not foreign to Catholic tradition; it defined it” (162). I have offered the author’s conclusions first because it is clear that they constitute a belief-system independent of analysis. For an author so in awe of changing historical consciousness, the reader is surprised to find that nothing at all has changed in Fr. Massa’s mind since about 1965. All Fr. Massa has done is to give a contemporary voice to the theory of Modernism, which holds that doctrines of faith and morals ultimately flow not from Revelation but from the religious consciousness of each epoch. In the Modernist view, there is no reason to suppose that Catholics of one era will come up with the same answers to life’s pressing questions as those in another era. We may, if we like, give a nod to Modernism for understanding what it takes no special wit to understand—that what happens happens. But it takes a huge leap of faith to assert that what happens is always lock, stock and barrel what God wants. The more significant questions are whether something should have happened, whether it happened without moral fault, whether it pleased God that it happened, whether what happened is salutary, whether it calls for celebration or conversion, and whether, in the last analysis, we are to form our judgments based on how a new culture interprets God’s will, or rather on a direct Revelation from God which somehow transcends culture. It is the answer to these questions that ought to determine our response to change. Unfortunately, Modernism’s revelation is historical consciousness. It may aptly be described as theology by happenstance. It is the very antithesis of Christianity, for Christianity provides man with the ability he craves to transcend the limitations of his historical environment. The Grain of Truth Modernists lament certain features of the Church in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and this lament has just enough truth in it to make Modernist theory appear plausible to the uninitiated. The problem is that the Church was often intellectually reactionary during this period. One can well understand why, for she had been battered unceasingly by an increasingly secular European ethos for the past hundred years or so, and her leaders were habituated to their own splendid system of thought, a system based largely on the Thomist synthesis which had been so effectively expounded in official Catholic circles since the counter-reformation. There was still a very strong sense that Europe was fundamentally Christian and that lost ground could be recovered by pushing back. The Church therefore had a marked tendency to defend those who defended her and condemn those who attacked her. She allied herself too often with what we may term the “old order”, and was too little open to what could be said in favor of new approaches. This was true politically, socially and theologically. Just as ecclesiastical authority had a marked tendency to favor the aristocracy over the working classes, so too it had a marked tendency to condemn theological work which moved outside the scholastic box. Pope Leo XIII began to shift the social outlook of the Church decisively in his encyclical Rerum Novarum, but it took longer for the Holy Office to take a more even-handed approach to the more creative thinkers of the Catholic world, those who tried to emphasize neglected areas of study or deploy modern insights to explore Revelation in new ways. Just as Newman had been distrusted in Rome for some time in the 19th century, though he was ultimately vindicated before he died, so too did remarkable theologians such as Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac occasion suspicion in Rome because of their interest in revivifying Catholic thought by returning to the sources, instead of always arguing within the highly formalistic scholastic framework. There was a lot of Modernism going around in the late 19th and early 20th century, and it was justly and repeatedly condemned. But not everybody who thought outside the box was a Modernist... What this means, especially in the overall context of the book, is not that the Church ought always to try to explain her teachings in as convincing a manner as possible, but that if she cannot explain them in a manner convincing to the Faithful, she has failed in an essential obligation. Further, this failure invalidates her doctrine, and removes any corresponding obligation on the part of the Faithful to follow it. For as Fr. Mark Massa knows full well, Charles Curran did not get in trouble for arguing that the Church ought to work hard to come up with better arguments against contraception. He got into trouble because he refused to agree with the Magisterial judgment that, on God’s own authority, contraception is immoral. In this the Church imitates Our Lord, for Jesus Christ did not insist that we understand everything the Father has revealed. In fact, He never seemed overly concerned that scholars often struggled intellectually with what He had to say. But He did expect them to recognize the signs of His authority, and so to receive everything He taught as a liberating truth. Ultimately for the Modernist there is nothing transcendent about Christianity, nothing timeless, nothing true always and everywhere, nothing eternal, nothing you can take to the bank in the economy of salvation. The sole criterion for orthodoxy is always orthopraxis. What is true is simply how people live. Revelation cannot serve as a guide to human history from the transcendent Author of history. No, Revelation is only whatever we discern as good in our own time and place. Once again let me state the obvious. Modernism is theology by happenstance. And this makes it the ultimate theology of convenience for the decadent West. If you wish to identify with the cultural mainstream, there is no better tactic than to make the cultural mainstream your source of Revelation. Thank you very much for this. In the light of your article the message which came out of Medjugorje on 25th May 2010 makes much more sense to me and perhaps to you also. May God bless you for all your work on this forum. Message of 25, May 2010 "Dear children! God gave you the grace to live and to defend all the good that is in you and around you, and to inspire others to be better and holier; but Satan, too, does not sleep and through modernism diverts you and leads you to his way. Therefore, little children, in the love for my Immaculate Heart, love God above everything and live His commandments. In this way, your life will have meaning and peace will rule on earth. Thank you for having responded to my call."
|
|
|
Post by clovis481 on Aug 7, 2011 19:35:35 GMT
Most of the enthusiasm for the "Spirit" of Vatican II nowadays seems to be found among priests, religious and laity who are in their sixties. "Renewal" and "reform" are no longer the catch-cries. There seems to be more vigour and determination among Traditionalists or the "reform of the reform" movement (if it can be called a movement). So were the Council and its aftermath dominated by the mood of the Sixties and contemporary intellectual fashions, which are now old hat for anyone under fifty? What will endure, what will wither away and is there anything that should be actively discarded? During the Masses I attend, I sense a burgeoning, collective desire for a return to conservatism. For example, and I realize this a 'small' example, an increasing number of people aren't holding hands during the recitation of the 'Our Father'. I never liked that practice much, myself, and always wondered where it came from. I concluded it was an extension of Vatican II-type liberalism. At last I'm comfortable not offering to hold hands with the strangers next to me.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Aug 19, 2011 10:38:34 GMT
I don't remember attending a Mass at which people were expected to hold hands during the Our Father - I think this must be a regional/personal thing, certainly not generally mandated. One problem that occurs a lot I think is a sort of "compulsory togetherness" - I have heard priests complaining that people prefer to sit apart from other people at Mass rather than next to one another, and complaining that we ought to engage in more "sharing". In other words, that we should act towards everyone in the congregation as if they were close personal friends, even if they are total strangers. The trouble is that they are not in fact our close friends, and being exhorted to behave as if they were just creates a superficial emotionalism which gives the appearance but not the reality of fellowship. this is a distortion of something that ought to be there, we should in fact reach out to others, but it seems clueless about how this should actually work in practice. Oddly enough, this is being preached at a time when most Catholic parishes are much less important in their congregation's social life than they used to be when a larger proportion of Cahtolics were practising and when parishes served people who lived in the same area and knew one another - as if somethign was taken for granted and has been lost and an attempt is being made to recapture it without understanding how it actually worked. (Similarly, we see Archbishop Martin declaring that as Catholic schools decline and vocations fall off, the home must be the primary transmitter of faith at a time when, thanks to the catechetic blunders of his predecessors and to various social changes, the home/family is less well-equipped than ever to transmit faith).
|
|
|
Post by shane on Aug 19, 2011 22:41:59 GMT
Holding hands during the Our Father was practiced in several American parishes I visited, but I've never seen it here.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Nov 27, 2012 12:57:33 GMT
|
|
|
Post by assisi on Nov 30, 2012 22:43:08 GMT
Not a particularly Irish version but it was fashionable to support a left of centre stance in the 70s and 80s based around a general acceptance of socialism/communism as an antidote to American foreign influence. Right from the Official IRA to support for anti-American Sandinistas in Nicaragua and liberation theology in Latin America the whole idea was popular among students and young people then.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Dec 1, 2012 0:11:49 GMT
To be fair, the idea of supporting liberation theology was probably no more naive than an older generation's cheerleading the supposed "Resurrection of Portugal" (the actual title of a 1940s tract explaining how all our problems would be solved if we imitated Salazar). Similarly, not all the causes supported by Sixties progressives in America were bad. The problem I think is (a) thinking it's still the 1960s (b) the element of wanting to be on the "cool" side and against the "squares" on the assumption that the latter can never be right.
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Dec 31, 2012 17:07:22 GMT
Paul VI - the case for the defence. Offered without comment as I don't know enough about PAul (under whose papacy I was born) to judge. I will say, however, that it plays down the widespread sense that Paul had simply lost control and that everything was up for grabs, which existed at the time. www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/12/rediscovering-paul-vi
|
|
|
Post by hibernicus on Jul 17, 2013 21:47:51 GMT
Interesting little detail (from the blog of the British LMS Chairman) - apparently during the debate on the Constitution on the Liturgy at Vatican II, the Irish Dominican Michael Cardinal Browne (who was on the "conservative" wing of the council), warned that if the vernacular was used in any part of the Mass it would lead to an all-vernacular Mass. Several Council fathers laughed out loud, and were seen as conveying the view that Cardinal Browne was engaging in scaremongering too ridiculous for words. This hardly suggests that the Council Fathers were single-mindedly determined to implement liturgical change on the scale that actually came about: www.lmschairman.org/2013/06/was-true-council-betrayed-reply-to.html
|
|