We regret the delay in transmitting the English and other (except French) editions that were due last week. Technical difficulties, since remedied, got in the way of our receiving the weekly text from His Excellency. We should be on course from here on out. Readers are thanked for their patience.
Vatican II was a disaster for the Catholic Church. For the future of the same Church it is essential for Catholics wishing to save their souls to see why it was such a disaster. Fr. Alvaro Calderón, professor of Thomist Philosophy and Theology at the Priestly Seminary of the Society of St Pius X at La Reja in Argentina, wrote ten years ago a book proving that Vatican II from inside the Church replaced the religion of God with the religion of man. The first of the four Parts of the book, to tell what Vatican II was, starts out with a three-part definition: it was the officialisation of a humanism dressed up as Catholicism.
Firstly it was a humanism, in other words a glorifying of man at the expense of God. The Middle Ages were followed by a series of humanisms, e.g. the Renaissance, the Reformation, the French Revolution, but each time the humanism had perished, says Calderón, because it cut with the Catholic Church. End result? Two World Wars. But this time it would be the churchmen themselves who would create the new humanism to fit the Catholic Church. Hence the unprecedented officialisation by Vatican II of what had always been a grave error denounced by the Church, but this time the churchmen would know how to make it seem Catholic. Thus they would reach out to the man-centred modern world by their new humanism, but at the same time they were intent upon staying within the Church, supposedly to save both modern man from his godlessness and the modern Church from its sterile isolation. At best the churchmen of Vatican II had good intentions, at worst they knew that their new reconciliation of opposed forces would not work, except to destroy the Church, but that is what the very worst of them wanted.
So why would the new reconciliation not work? Because Paul VI wanted a new humanism, neither inhumanly oriented towards God, like in the Middle Ages, nor excessively reacting against that like in modern times, but a new balance between the two excesses which would show that the greater glory of God coincides with the glory of man. For instance man is the greatest creation of his Creator, so to glorify man is also to glorify God. And man is in the image of God by being free, so the more free he is, the more he glorifies God. Therefore to promote human dignity and freedom is to glorify not only man but also God. However, if one starts out from the glory of man, who cannot see the risk of slipping back into the glory of man? Moreover, God is the one and only altogether Perfect Being who cannot therefore need or want for anything outside of His own intrinsic glory. Only secondarily, for his extrinsic glory, can He want or desire any creature’s goodness outside of His own. Therefore the truth is that both God and man are primarily oriented towards God, and God can only be secondarily oriented towards man.
But here are some quotes from the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes: “Man is centre and summit of all things on earth . . . lord and governor of all creation” (#12) – is that not rather God? “The love of God and neighbour is the First Commandment” (#24) – does neighbour appear in the First Commandment? “Man is the only creature loved by God for himself” (#24). For man himself? The deviation is grave, but subtle, and in the Council’s own texts it is rather implicit than explicit, but it emerges more clearly in Church teaching after the Council, for instance in the New Catechism (e.g. 293, 294, 299). In effect, says Fr Calderón, the Council puts man on the throne of Creation, and God at his service.
Similarly, Vatican II turns authority upside down. Humanism is always against authority, but the New Humanism must look Catholic, so it must look for a different way for Christ’s authority to reign in the modern Church and world. But Christ said that he came to serve (Mt. XXV, 25–28). So the Newhierarchy would make itself democratic from top to bottom in order to serve modern man in a way understood by him. But where in the Newhierarchy will there be the authority of God be to lift men to Heaven? It will be dissolved, and with authority dissolved in the Church, authority will be dissolved everywhere, as we see around us in 2019.
Fr Calderón’s Part II will be the New Man of Vatican II, Part III the New Church, Part IV the New Religion.
Kyrie eleison.
