UPDATE: At the end, I’ve updated this with some interesting info I was just sent. I had missed it before and it is relevant to my rants.
At the always useful The Catholic Thing there is a piece well-worth reading by Eduardo J. Echeverria. It is helpful because it identifies one of the driving influences behind so many of the odd things that have been perpetrated in the name of Vatican II, namely, the so-called “Bologna School” of interpretation. The main exponents of this movement are Giuseppe Dossetti, Alberto Melloni and Giuseppe Alberigo. This is the gang principally behind the yak yak about the “spirit” of the Council.
They would be connected to the infamous Pact of the Catacombs and the St. Gallen Mafia.
I’ve been writing that while the “Walking Together about Walking Togetherity” is exploring all manner of poppycock, such as the ordination of deaconettes, the real content of the “W-T” is its own process, its self-perpetuation as an instrument of permanent revolution.
A taste of the piece at TCT:
Ratzinger, Vatican II, and the Idea of Synodality
In a 1975 essay on the reception of Vatican II, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger commented on the meaning and limits of councils. His main point is that councils are sometimes a necessity. But he adds, “they always point to an extraordinary situation in the Church and are not to be regarded as a model for her life in general or even as the ideal content of her existence.”
Ratzinger concludes:
In plain language: the council is an organ of consultation and decision. As such, it is not an end in itself but an instrument in the service of the life of the Church. . . .If a council becomes the model of Christianity per se, then the constant discussion of Christian themes comes to be considered the content of Christianity itself; but precisely there lies the failure to recognize the true meaning of Christianity.
If this sounds like a critique of the idea of synodality, clergy and laity walking together (in Greek, syn-hodos, “on the way with”), that’s because it is. This critique directs itself to an interpretation of Vatican II represented by the late Giuseppe Alberigo (1926-2007), the director of the Institute for the Study of Religion, in Bologna, Italy, and the guiding scholar of the five-volume History of Vatican II.
[…]
I interrupt to make a point. A pretty good historian of councils, a deceased Jesuit John W. O’Malley wrote in his book about Vatican II something that explained the “spirit” of the Council this way. In nutshell, O’Malley – not a theologian and clearly a lib – thought that the real content of the Council was not the black on white of the documents but rather the marked change in tone. It is in this change of tone or attitude that we find the real message of the Council, so strong that it forces reinterpretation of everything that went before. In short, justification for rupture.
Back to the TCT piece:
[…]
[T]he “spirit– the deep motivating forces of the council that steered and shaped the council – is associated with the reforming energy and dynamism present at the Council; what was later called the ‘event’, a historicization of the ‘spirit’, which is always greater than the text that only partially represents it.”
Alberigo’s central thesis is that the Council’s texts – all sixteen documents – are not its primary elements. That would be a reductive vision of the Council that fastens on “the letter alone and [is] unable to penetrate to the deeper motivation and universal, historical significance of the Council.” Primacy should be ascribed to the event itself, that is, the event of an emerging “conciliar consciousness.” [Sounding familiar?]
According to Alberigo, “The Council as such, as an event of communion, of encounter and exchange, is the fundamental message that constitutes the context and kernel of its reception.”
This is the “event” character of the Council denoting a “rupture,” a “break,” a marked “discontinuity” with the pre-Vatican II Catholic tradition. If I understand Alberigo correctly, this conciliar experience has to be extended to the Church as a whole because the Council – conciliar consciousness – should be taken to be the model of the Christian life as such.
[…]
conciliar consciousness
synodal way
Take a look at the piece at TCT. Read to the end where he has interesting conclusion that I only partially agree with. Partially because I don’t think he goes far enough. I think you’ll understand what I mean.
Finally, while the Jesuit O’Malley was probably a heretic, he was a pretty good historian and he tamps down his own inclinations. I think he had an agenda in writing his book on Trent, which if you are careful, you will pick up. However, the book is just so darn packed with fascinating information that it is well-worth your time. I learned a great deal about
Trent: What Happened at the Council by John O’Malley. [US HERE – UK HERE]
UPDATE: 21 Oct 23 1832
At LifeSite there is more about this Bologna and Catacomb connection.
Fri Oct 20, 2023
Pope Francis gives Synod members Vatican II lobby group’s liberation theology text[…]
In an article published October 13, Jesuit-run America Magazine revealed that participants of the Synod on Synodality were given a controversial and secret text during their October 12 trip to the Catacombs of Sts. Sebastian, Callistus and Domitilla. (An archive of the America Magazine report is available here.)
The report stated how the prayer booklet given to Synod participants “included the full text of the Pact of the Catacombs.” Of note is that this was not included in the booklet emailed to journalists of the Vatican press corps.
[…]
What is the Catacombs Pact?
On November 16, 1965, 42 bishops attending the Second Vatican Council met in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla to compile and sign the “Pact of the Catacombs,” or the Catacombs Pact. The text has remained largely out of the public eye, but is a formulation of 13 key points pertaining to Church life, organization and practice, all based on tenets of the heterodox ideology known as Liberation Theology.
[…]
Bishop Luigi Bettazzi’s signature on the 1965 Pact thus linked the document to the work of other prominent liberal forces at play during those years. Bettazzi, records de Mattei, signed as the representative of Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro – the Archbishop of Bologna.
Lercaro was highly influential in compiling the Novus Ordo liturgy alongside Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, and was one of four moderators appointed by Pope Paul VI to oversee daily proceedings of Vatican II, only weeks after Paul VI was elected pope in June 1963.
A certain Father Giuseppe Dossetti served as Cdl. Lercaro’s theological advisor. Dossetti was the leading figure behind the so-called “Bologna School,” which promoted the liberal “spirit” of the Council and portrayed traditionalists as enemies.
De Mattei describes the School of Bologna as “the intellectual laboratory of European ultra-progressivism.”
[…]
There’s LOT more there about the web of connections which are now revealing their aims.
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Many decades ago, I entered Seminary in the Byzantine Rite. The Liturgy was still traditional and beautiful. At the dinner table when I listenened to all the scholarly Priest, most who had entered Seminary at 14 years of age in Lebanon. They were fully embracing the liberalism that was infecting the “thinking” of the clergy. Seminarians couldn’t leave the grounds without wearing our cassocks. Priest roamed freely without clericals. One day my spiritual advisor told us how he gave a talk to the laity, saying sometimes he feels sexy! Didn’t wait for the door to hit me on the way out.
Very interesting.
I don’t disagree with O’Malley about the tone of the VII documents. However, Roberto DeMattei, another great historian of VII, wrote a VII history book that has led me to the conclusion that the ultimate significance of VII lies not in the language of the VII documents, but rather, at the political level. VII involved a series of battles between liberals and conservatives over language. The liberals won nearly all the battles. The significance of this was not so much the language that was adopted, as it was the fact that it revealed to the liberals and the whole Church how much power the liberals had. With the liberal political power having been made apparent through the conduct and results of the Council, after the council liberal bishops had a much freer hand to push the liberal agenda. As a result, the liberal predominance became cemented within the Church.
DeMattei’s book is translated into English under the title “The Second Vatican Council — An Unwritten Story.” It is an excellent book.
Ratzinger did not become Cardinal until 27 June 1977. He was not yet cardinal when he wrote that.
It seems that this WTF is about pushing off onto a group of lackeys the responsibility of being Pope so that a pope could teach and promote heresy by supporting this group of fall guys and gals whose task it is to discuss and proclaim heresies, all the while pretending to be helpless to oppose them. It will not save the Pope from judgement to say, “I didn’t do it, this group of lay persons and random religious did it.” Not gonna fly. PRAY for our priests and religious! Pray for families.
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