Saturday, May 16, 2015

Was the Second Vatican Council "different"? Is the devil in the detail of language?

"Was the Second Vatican Council 'different'? (Part 1)" (FideCogitActio, May 9, 2015). This is merely Part 1 of what promises to be a substantial discussion. Here are just a few excerpts:
“At the conclusion of one of the most important recent books on the Second Vatican Council, What Happened at Vatican II (2008), John O’Malley SJ states that the most important ‘issue under the issues’ at the council called by John XXIII was language. The Jesuit historian argues that Vatican II was ‘a language event’ and that ‘the style of discourse was the medium that conveyed the message’.”

Massimo Faggioli, 15 February 2015

* * *

First of all, by refusing to include canons and decrees in its official teachings, Vatican II of its very nature created room for dissent and ambiguity in a way that no other council had ever done before.

Second, by intentionally adopting a novel rhetorical and ideological strategy for addressing error and articulating truth, Vatican II differed from prior councils in a way that the sensus catholicus is still attempting to digest, and, to be frank, may never succeed in wholly assimilating. The conflicts arising after Vatican II are, therefore, rooted in the conciliar intentions and documents themselves, and not, as in prior councils, in the extrinsic reactions to them. It is, therefore, a red herring to argue that, since previous councils were also followed by conflict and resistance, and were also met with unforeseeable challenges many years or even decades later, therefore the post-Conciliar crisis is just a typical function of ecclesial councils.

... In contrast, Vatican II generated such a tsunami of doctrinal, liturgical, and canonical “considerations” that it’s impossible for anyone to know precisely which horn of the many ambiguities one is required to affirm. After all, if an ecumenical council has enshrined the ambiguities, who are we to dissolve them?
[Hat tip to JM]

8 comments:

Son of Ya'Kov said...

I still maintain the charge of "ambigiouity" is itself ambiguous. I can point to texts in the so called Second Council of Ephesus and identify the heresy.

I can do this with Nicea's Arian rival too. But I have never met a single modernist who has ever quoted a text of Vatican II to justify their heresies. At best I heard appeals to the "Spirit of Vatican II" but never the text.

The two dogmatic constitutions are rather straight forward IMHO.

William C. said...

Son of Ya'Kov,

Have you never seen the use Fr. John Courtney Murray, S.J. makes of Dignitatis Humanae or the use inter-religious modernists typically make of Nostrae aetate?

JM said...



See Brian Harrison's treatment of Paul VI and Inerrancy, and then see how folks like Raymond E Brown use Dei Verbum. It may not technically be heresy, but it most certainly is Modernism as the earlier popes saw it in the encyclicals on Scripture. George Kelly's The New Biblical Theorists is helpful here. Vatican II open the floodgate. Also helpful is James Hitchcock on the Biblical Revival and why it so quickly went haywire.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

All ecumenical councils have trailed in their wakes all manner of kooks and weirdoes, schismatics and heretics, but Raider Fan does not recall any of the Fathers of the Church who participated in those earlier councils who publicly averred that they had participated in intentionally drafting ambiguous documents.

It is an unassailable observation that God intended each of us to be alive at this time but, surely, one can be forgiven if in his flummification, a man starts to think he is as cursed as is the transvaginal mesh salesman who was just diagnosed with Mesothelioma.

Pertinacious Papist said...

R.F.,

You're too funny, from "flummification" to the "tv mesh salseman diagnosed with Mesothelioma.

More cabernet.

Son of Ya'Kov said...

Hi guys I have been occupied debating gay marriage with Irish people.
Sorry I let you hanging.


>Have you never seen the use Fr. John Courtney Murray, S.J. makes of Dignitatis Humanae or the use inter-religious modernists typically make of Nostrae aetate?

Does he quote the actual text or does he make claims about it's teaching without quoting & what are his claims that Dignitatis Humanae teach that are heretical?

That would help.

>See Brian Harrison's treatment of Paul VI and Inerrancy, and then see how folks like Raymond E Brown use Dei Verbum. It may not technically be heresy...


Well I know some modernists using Abbot's mistranslation of Vatican II's Dei Verbum have made erroneous claims about Biblical Inerrancy (the error the Bible is only inerrant when it teaches matters on Faith & Morals).

But Flannery's correct translation from the Latin usually fixes that up.

Pertinacious Papist said...

Son of a Ya'Kov!! =)

I'm not sure what William had in mind re "Nostra Aetate," but I've read a great critique of the work Murray, S.J., did with "Dignitatis H." Murray didn't just USE D.H. He practically WROTE the dang thing. The critique is by Fr. Brian W. Harrison, a terrific and pains-taking scholar. I first read it in an anthology based on a conference held at Franciscan University on Murray's work, much of it critical. Don't remember the title, but James Hitchcock wrote the Introductory piece, also good.

At least part of Harrison's piece might be found here: http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt33.html. He shows that only a last-minute intervention kept the whole thing from going off the rails, but how even so Murray's nefarious influence prevailed because he wrote the English footnotes to the V-II document in the Abbott English edition, which continued his tendentious spinnings and weavings; and he dominated the post-V II interpretation of the document -- not for better, but for worse. Still, as it stands, the document is capable of being interpreted in light of tradition, provided one squints a bit. What a compliment!

Son of Ya'Kov said...

>Son of a Ya'Kov!! =)\

I like that!:-)

Thanks for the link.