Suggestions on How to Correct Vatican II: What Can Be Saved / Restored Via A New Council or Papal Acts

By: Stephen Hand

Monday, June 1, 2009
Traditional Catholic Reflections and Reports

Gleaned from the writings of many theologians and confessors who seek to realign the Council with Sacred Tradition.

By virtually every index Vatican II has been calamitous for the Church [See the Fruits of Vatican II]. It has blurred or erased traditional Catholic doctrines involving us in the most serious contradictions, intended or not; it has decimated Catholic Religious Orders and vocations, closing churches everywhere to this day, it has suppressed Confession [half hour or hour on Saturdays for whole churches] and involved us in the most grave moral scandals thanks in no small part to heretical teachers with their new "Christologies," new ecclesiologies and morals, and yet who are not warned and expelled but allowed to teach in our schools and seminaries to this very hour.

The Roman Catholic Church is virtually collapsing---and that collapse began with Vatican II and its (at least) obscuring, ambiguous principles. Therefore it must be the "pastoral" thing for a true Pope to correct, fix, the problems and unambiguously realign the Church to the perennial pre-conciliar doctrinal and spiritual tradition, else we are involved in ecclesial suicide---or murder. A pope must both feed the sheep and protect them from the wolves. To do only one or the other would amount to a culpable reckless disregard for the office for which Christ commissioned him.

Below are suggestions on how to do the pastoral thing in favor of perennial Catholic teaching and praxis:

Reaffirm and Realign Church Teaching and praxis in accordance with the whole of sacred tradition, the unequivocal teachings of pre-Vatican II popes, especially the Council of Trent and Vatican I. Express sadness that ambiguity or carelessness at best blurred or erased such teachings and gave rise to false impressions across many lines.

New Global Developments: It is a good thing to emphasize the global interrelatedness of the peoples of the earth and to emphasize the need for peace, peacemaking, cooperation and trade among peoples, global nuclear disarmament, all the while affirming the splendid diversity of sovereign nations, which sovereignty should be affirmed and not co-opted by internationalist schemes of any sort.

Catholic Ecumenism: It is a good thing to set out with renewed love and sensitivity to seek to explain the Catholic Faith to all who express a will to dialog, yet without compromising the Faith which cannot change; realizing that love alone cannot transcend doctrinal differences which must be acknowledged in all intellectual and spiritual honesty. The aim should be to better explain the Faith to all and to affirm what is good in others. Where differences must remain this should not in any way prevent our active cooperation with other ecclesial communities who feel they cannot in conscience accept Catholic doctrine, nor we theirs. Such cooperation in those things which Christ taught cannot but be a good for the whole world: peacemaking, works of mercy, unbounded charity towards the poor and the weak, together. This new fraternal spirit, while it cannot lead to communion in worship, can still be a sign of peace to the world.

Collegiality: Reiterate the unambiguous teachings of Vatican I, emphasizing that collegiality comes into being only when the bishops of the world are consulted as a bloc at the behest of the Pope, as for instance in an ecumenical Council or synod.

The Restoration of Catholic Nations: This should be viewed as no more of a threat to anyone than (in principle) Israel or Islamic nations, etc., should be. Birds of a feather naturally flock together according to the natural law. This need not in any way prevent or impede the aforementioned cooperation in every thing possible. Catholic states may very well and with great profit opt for the restoration of monarchy, as an image and sign of Christ the King, along with democratic, parliamentary representation of the people within the boundaries of the natural and moral laws. Moral evils alone should not be tolerated and should be given no place in Catholic nations; those who disagree should be free to leave.

Religious Liberty: restore the perennial Catholic teaching that while Catholic states---whatever their form of government--- must affirm the Catholic Church as the official Church and soul of any Catholic nation, reasonable toleration should be showed to religious minorities which are not subversive of the Catholic state itself; and love should be shown towards all, especially those who have sought refuge because persecuted in other lands.

Address the Ambiguities of Modern Technology and Science: It is unseemly for Church officials to pronounce on scientific theories (which should be acknowledged as such, as with, say, Darwinism, as opposed to the "hard," practical sciences); better to acknowledge the often times dangerous ambiguities which mix the undeniably good with that which is undeniably bad according to perennial Catholic teaching and principles.

Restore the Traditional Catholic Mass to the whole Church as the Mass of all ages, and cease all liturgical experimentation which has born such deleterious fruit for decades; at the same time affirming the traditional Tridentine Catholic theology of the Mass as the greatest gift and means of sanctification and catechesis for the whole Church always. This was the Mass which sanctified the saints and martyrs who lacked nothing and we must treasure it above all, and abolish the Novus Ordo liturgy which has served as the engine of the revolutionaries, ---the fruits of which have hurt the Church immeasurably---which problems did not exist prior to 1969.

This would be a start. And traditional Catholics await the day when it (or something very close to it) will be restored. Truth is ever young. The Truth is ever modern. ---7/1/08

"Many have elevated the Council as if it were a superdogma, when in truth, it was not dogmatic at all” ---Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro, chief of Human Life International’s Rome bureau, Remnant Jan 28, 2009

VATICAN I: " The Holy Ghost has promised the successors of Peter, not that they may disclose new doctrine by His revelation, but that they may, with His assistance, preserve conscientiously and expound faithfully the revelation transmitted through the Apostles, the deposit of Faith... and therefore the definitions of the same Roman Pontiff are, by themselves and not by virtue of the consent of the Church, irreformable." (Pastor Aeternus, July 18, 1870)

However we look at it, it is difficult: whether we ask the documents of Vatican II to interpret the post-conciliar fruits, or whether we ask the fruits, beginning almost immediately from the time of the Council, to interpret the documents.