"It is clear that the Church is facing a grave crisis. Under the name of 'the new Church', the post-conciliar Church, a different Church from that of Jesus Christ, is now trying to establish itself: An anthropocentric society threatened with immanentist apostasy which is allowing itself to be swept along in a movement of general abdication under the pretext of renewal, ecumenism, or adaptation."[Hat tip to I Am Not Spartacus]-- Cardinal Henri de Lubac, Temoinage Chretien (Paris, September 1, 1967),
quoted in Tom Reidy, Critical Mass: A Chronicle of the Catholic
Church in the First Generation After Vatican II(2012)
De Lubac is stating the obvious, with a great show of concern, even alarm. Yet whatever destruction hostile agents within the Church (communists, Masons, whatever) accomplished during these years, it was done under the aegis of pernicious ideas such as Balthazar's razing of bastions, Rahner's anthropocentrism, and De Lubac's "natural supernaturalism." These three, among many others, stormed the theological barricades of Catholicism: when their efforts were lionized by Vatican II and institutionalized during the utterly catastrophic reign of Pope Montini (and of John Paul "the Great", and even Benedict), it was only a matter of time before the practical consequences were rolled out to their nethermost ends, in every thing from the deconstruction of the traditional mass and sacraments, to the marxist reimagining of the Sermon on the Mount. For all of the shock and surprise registered by such as De Lubac and Papa Montini himself, how surprising, really, was any of it?
ReplyDelete"We are stating this in a diplomatic manner, BUT AFTER THE COUNCIL WE SHALL DRAW THE CONCLUSIONS IMPLICIT IN IT."
If you dismantle the fences surrounding the meadow in which the sheep graze, and discharge the shepherds of their duties, all the while gavotting and heehawing like drunken donkeys in celebration of your new "openness" and your tinkly charm bracelets of newfound "charisms," how surprised can you be when you awaken on the Monday following your lost weekend to find that the wolves have made off with your flock?
By the way, I have read Tom Reidy's introduction to his book in Amazon. Some good info, but beware: his attitude seems to be "boy, that first decade or two was cra-Z, but Benedict has really reached out, and things are so much better now." The lobotomized Neo-Cath version of the postconciliar catastrophe.
ReplyDelete