Descartes

The havoc wrought upon souls throughout the world by the 1960’s collapse of the mass of Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council, is immeasurable. So one can hardly reflect too much on the essential problem, because it is still very much with us, in fact more so than ever. It threatens to send all of our souls down to Hell. Last year the Italian fortnightly periodical, Si Si No No, published an article summarising the main errors of a pioneer “theologian” of Vatican II, the French Dominican Fr. Marie-Dominique Chenu. Laid out still more briefly below, his six errors point to the heart of the problem: the putting of man in the place of God (I have changed their order – thereby hangs a tale for another “EC”):

Turning to man, as though it is God that needs to be adapted to modern man, and not modern man to God. But Catholicism strives always to fit man to God, and not the other way around.

Submitting divine Revelation to modern ways of thinking, e.g. Descartes, Kant, Hegel. No more is there any absolute, objective Truth. All religious statements become merely relative and subjective.

Submitting divine Revelation to the historical method, meaning that every truth arose merely in its historical context, so that just as every historical context was or is changing, so no truth is unchanging or unchangeable.

Believing in pantheistic evolution, meaning that God is no longer the Creator essentially distinct from creation. He becomes no different from creatures, which come into being by evolution, and by evolution are constantly changing.

Putting feelings first in matters of religion, i.e. putting religious sentimental experience above either supernatural Faith in the mind or supernatural Charity in the will.

Denying the difference between good and evil, by claiming that the mere existence of a human act makes it good. Now it is true that every human act that happens has the goodness of being, but it only has moral goodness if it is ordered to its end, which is ultimately God. Human acts not ordered to God are morally evil.

The six errors are obviously inter-connected. If (1) religion is to centre on me, then (2 & 3) I must unhook my mind from reality, where religion centres on God. With the mind crippled, then (4) “nothing is but what is not,” so everything evolves, and (5) feelings take over (whereupon religion is by the fault of men feminized, because emotion is women’s prerogative). Finally, where feelings replace truth, (6) morality collapses.

In the Vatican II documents themselves, these errors are rather implicit than explicit, because the errors had to be disguised for the documents to get the vote of the mass of Catholic bishops who were attending the Council but were not yet sufficiently up-dated. However, these errors represent the fully up-dated “spirit of Vatican II,” which is where the Council was headed, and that is why the official Church has been on a path of self-destruction for the past 45 years: 1965 to 2010. For how many more years?

Kyrie eleison.