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New Pentecost

Post-conciliar Church vs. traditional and conservative catholics

Rev. Rama Coomaraswamy

CREED AND CULT IN THE POST-CONCILIAR CHURCH
A STUDY IN AGGIORNAMENTO (part 1)

Vatican II was proclaimed by John XXIII as 'a singular gift of divine providence' and the heralding of a 'New Pentecost'. Not only a New Council, but subsequently, a new Liturgy and a new code of Canon Law resulted. Whatever the judgment of history may be, one thing in clear: this Council and its sequels changed the Church.

The manner in which Catholics reacted to the changes introduced by this Council has varied. Some, especially among the clergy, welcomed them with alacrity. Others resisted them from the start. The majority accepted them because they were habituated to accepting whatever came from Rome as true and valid. When they saw their altars turned into tables and their tabernacles displaced, they acquiesced out of obedience. When they heard their clergy expressing strange opinions, they dismissed them as extremists and ignored them. After all, they were born and bred as Catholics and they knew their faith could never change.

With the course of time things became more confused. The hierarchy, often selected on the basis of their commitment to the changes did everything in their power to propagate the 'new economy of the Gospel'. If many of the adults remained steadfast in the old faith, others influenced by sermons, 'Cursillos' and 'Renewal Programs', adopted new and more 'dynamic' viewpoints. Children subjected to a constant catechetical 'brain-washing' followed suit. Statements emanating from the hierarchy became increasingly ambiguous, and hence open to multiple interpretations. It soon became clear that we were being offered, not one faith, but several and that one could believe almost anything one wished and still call oneself a Catholic. 'Pluralism' was ' in' and one could pick and choose one's parish and even one's priest, depending on whether one was 'conservative' or 'progressive'.

Not everyone was happy with the 'New Pentecost'. Thousands of priests and nuns began to abandon their vocations. Communions and Confessions dropped precipitously. 1 Young people began to leave the faith in droves - in one study undertaken at Catholic University (Washington D.C., USA) it was shown that 'nearly seven million young people from Catholic backgrounds no longer identified themselves with the Church'. While the greater majority or erstwhile Catholics thoughtlessly followed the meandering of the post-Conciliar Church, others began to split up into factions. For the sake of convenience I shall label these as 'traditional' - those who refuse to accept any or the changes in doctrine and liturgy; 'conservative' - those that accept the changes with regret and always interpret them in the most traditional way possible; and the 'progressives' who not only accept all the changes, but push for still further advances along the Conciliar path. Obviously such a classification will not satisfy everyone, but it has the advantage of paralleling similar ones in other religions that admit to a sliding scale of belief and commitment, such as the Jews with their 'orthodox,' 'conservative' and 'reform' congregations and the Anglicans with their high, low and middle 'churches.''

To understand all this, we must examine the nature of the changes involved. But first we must ask two fundamental questions. WHAT IS 'CHANGE', and CAN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH CHANGE? The answers depend on what we understand by the term. If by 'change' we mean the development of an acorn into an oak tree, the answer is clearly yes. If, however, we mean the alteration of an oak-tree into a pine-tree, the answer is just as clearly no. Now, this is precisely the problem which Vatican II - I use the term in its generic and broadest sense - poses. No one argues but that it changed the Church. If it did so in the former sense, we are all obliged to accept it - if in the latter sense, only by rejection can we still continue to call ourselves Catholic. And so the real issue before us is the way in which Vatican II 'changed' the Church.

One of principal changes introduced by Vatican II was a new attitude towards history and towards the world. Catholics had always been taught they were members of a Church rooted in eternity and established by Christ 'in saecula saeculorum'. They believed that, despite the failure of its members, the Church established by Christ was in itself a 'divine institution,' and hence, in no need of Improvement. Suddenly they found themselves in a Church 'tied to history' attempting an aggiorniamento with the modern world - 'a Church of our times,' as John Paul II calls it. Those adhering to their former beliefs and practices found themselves in 'disobedience'. They could not understand how, if they were Catholic before the changes, they could no longer consider themselves as such after them.

According to John Paul II, 'the contemporary church has a particular sensibility towards history, and wishes to be, in every extension of the term, 'the Church of the contemporary world' ' (June 28, 1980, to the Roman Curia). Elsewhere he tells us that 'the Second Vatican Council has laid the foundations for a substantially new relationship between the Church and the world, between the Church and modern cultures'(College, Dec. 22, 1980). What does this mean? Surely it expresses a belief in Progress, Evolution, and the need for the Church to continually adapt itself to the world around it. Such an interpretation is more than justified if we accept the teaching of Vatican II that 'the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic evolutionary one' and the statements of Paul Vl that 'the order to which Christianity tends is not static, but an order in continual evolution towards a higher form' (Dialogues, Reflections on God and Man) and that 'if the world changes, should not religion also change?' (Audience, July 2, 1969).

Even more striking evidence for this interpretation is found in the following passages taken from Vatican II:'historical studies make a signal contribution to bringing men to see things in their changeable and evolutionary aspects... (25) Man's social nature make it evident that the progress of the human person and the advance or society itself hinge on each other...(25) Citizens have the right and duty... to contribute according to their ability to the true progress of their community...(65) Developing nations should strongly desire to seek the complete human fulfillment of their Citizens as the explicit and fixed goal or progress... (86) ' ('The Church in the Modern World')

'May the faithful, therefore, live in very close union with the men of their time. Let them strive to understand perfectly their way or thinking and feeling, as expressed in their culture. Let them blend modern science and its theories and the understanding of the most recent discoveries with Christian morality and doctrine. Thus their religious practice and morality can keep pace with their scientific knowledge and with an ever-advancing technology.' (Pastoral Constitution on the Church, P. 62.)

We have then highlighted one of the more significant changes introduced by Vatican II. The Church of All Times has been changed into 'the Church of our times'. A 'static' Church has been converted into an 'evolutionary and progressivist' church committed to continual adaptation. But, it will be asked, does the post-Conciliar Church apply these dubious principles to doctrine? Despite a certain ambiguity, the majority of theologians hold that it does. The catchword is 'development' which allows for various shades of meaning. It has been used by the Fathers of the Church to describe the legitimate expression of principles in new ways, analogous to the growth and flowering of a tree. But it has also been used by modern man as applied to the development of man from apes.