"And we know that this Council of the media was accessible to all. So, dominant, more efficient, this Council created many calamities, so many problems, so much misery, in reality: seminaries closed, convents closed liturgy trivialized... and the true Council has struggled to materialize, to be realized: the virtual Council was stronger than the real Council."

- Pope Benedict XVI -

(www.RemnantNewspaper.com) Pope Benedict XVI has declared in what is likely to be his last address to the clergy of his diocese of Rome that he will vacate the chair of Peter completely committed to the Second Vatican Council.  If his February 14 speech is any indication there will be no last minute change of position toward the Society of St. Pius X regarding Vatican II.  The Holy Father seems determined to end his tenure defending the elusive real Council against its supposed false impersonator these past decades.

His Holiness admits the disastrous consequences immediately following the Council: “this Council created many calamities, so many problems, so much misery, in reality: seminaries closed, convents closed, the liturgy was trivialized” Yet, the “this Council” referred to by the Holy Father is not the real Second Vatican Council, the one that actually functioned in Rome for three years and produced documents.  No, Benedict XVI claims an imposter Council, the “Council of the Journalists” is the one that caused all these disastrous consequences.  If only the real “Council of the Fathers” had been allowed to do its job undistorted by the media all would be well for the Church!  “The world interpreted the Council through the eyes of the media instead of seeing the true Council of the Fathers and their key vision of faith”. “The journalists’ interpretation of the Council was political.”

This is the same recycled excuse of those who want to accept a contradictory reality: the Council is good and its fruits are bad.  The problem with the Council is that it has never been understood.  This is despite the fact that his predecessor went about for over twenty years explaining in great deal what the real Council said. 

Benedict blames the false media interpretation of the Council for having produced the democratization of the Church, not the Council Fathers. “The media saw the Council as a political struggle, a struggle for power between different currents within the Church. It was obvious that the media would take the side of whatever faction best suited their world. There were those who sought a decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the Word for the “people of God”, the power of the people, the laity. There was this triple issue: the power of the Pope, then transferred to the power of the bishops and then the power of all … popular sovereignty. Naturally they saw this as the part to be approved, to promulgate, to help.”  (emphasis added)

Now let us be clear with the facts.  It was not the New York Times nor the London Evening Standard who created the virus of collegiality and bishops conferences and the demand for more “active participation” of the laity in the government of the Church.  It was the documents of the Second Vatican Council that did this.  It was not Fox News who adopted a new Code of Canon Law that enshrined in law, according to the Council Father John Paul II, collegiality.  Here is what John Paul II said in his decree promulgating the Code:

If we now turn our attention to the nature of the labours which preceded the promulgation of the Code and to the manner in which they were performed, especially during the Pontificates of Paul VI, John Paul I and then up to this present day, it is vital to make quite clear that these labours were brought to their conclusion in an eminently collegial spirit. This not only relates to the external composition of the work, but it affects also the very substance of the laws which have been drawn up.

This mark of collegiality by which the process of this Code’s origin was prominently characterised, is entirely in harmony with the teaching authority and the nature of the Second Vatican Council. The Code therefore, not only because of its content but because also of its origin, demonstrates the spirit of this Council in whose documents the Church, the universal sacrament of salvation (cf Const. Lumen Gentium, n. 9, 48) is presented as the People of God, and its hierarchical constitution is shown as founded on the College of Bishops together with its Head.” (emphasis added).

Unless Benedict XVI is claiming that the Council Father John Paul II is not part of the Council of the Fathers but rather the Council of the Media, the destruction of the Church’s hierarchical structure by collegiality and the People of God is not the work of this supposed Council imposter but rather is in harmony with the letter and the spirit of the Council of the Fathers.  Even Benedict XVI admits that this popular sovereignty was a “part” of the Council.  He simply blames the media for “promulgating” and “helping” it.  The media no doubt happily helped it but once again it was John Paul II who promulgated collegiality as law… not the media.

Likewise, Benedict XVI blames the liturgical crisis on what he called the “virtual Council”, not the historical Council. 

“This was the case for the liturgy: there was no interest in the liturgy as an act of faith, but as a something to be made understandable, similar to a community activity, something profane. And we know that there was a trend, which was also historically based, that said: “Sacredness is a pagan thing, possibly even from the Old Testament. In the New Testament the only important thing is that Christ died outside: that is, outside the gates, that is, in the secular world”. Sacredness ended up as profanity even in worship: worship is not worship but an act that brings people together, communal participation and thus participation as activity. And these translations, trivializing the idea of ​​the Council, were virulent in the practice of implementing the liturgical reform, born in a vision of the Council outside of its own key vision of faith. And it was so, also in the matter of Scripture: Scripture is a book, historical, to treat historically and nothing else, and so on.”

According to this fictional dichotomy it was not the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy which called for the revision of the liturgical books to make them more relevant, which permitted the enculturation of relevant local practices (so long as the collegial bishops conference approved), which permitted for the first time the translations of which the Holy Father complains, in short it was not this document’s destruction of the strict hierarchical control over the liturgy by the Holy See for centuries for the sake of its preservation that brought about this secularization of the Liturgy.  No, it was the media’s misuse of the document. 

Forgive me, Holy Father, but it was a Commission of the Holy See under the careful eye of Paul VI which composed a new Mass rejected by two-thirds of the bishops when first shown to them that gave us the New Mass.  It was not written by CNN.  As to the deplorable translations, all of which were authorized by the Council document and the Holy See, the destruction of the liturgy transcends these false translations.  Recall that the Ottavianni Intervention concluded that the new rite departed from the solemn definition of the Mass according to Trent before a single translation was used.  According to Bishop Fellay’s report the Society’s theological objections to the New Mass are not primarily rooted in the mistranslations of the Latin text but in the Latin text itself. 

No, it was not the media but Paul VI, Archbishop Bugnini, the various bishops conferences, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the document which enabled them all, the Constitution on the Liturgy, which wrought this destruction of the Roman Rite. 

It is always easier to blame a scapegoat.  It allows you to avoid the real evidence.  It is even easier when the real culprit is a friend, or protégé.  Pope Benedict was one of the midwives who gave birth to the historical real documented Second Vatican Council and it is much easier to blame the big bad media than one’s beloved child.  Have no despair; notwithstanding the continual downward spiral of the Church in all areas of measurement, the real Council is finally emerging says Pope Benedict, with a smile of hope for his priests “50 years later, the strength of the real Council has been revealed. [when would that be?] Our task for the Year of Faith is to bring the real Second Vatican Council to life [but I thought it already has been revealed?].”

You see the “real Council” is finally after all these long years showing its true self.  “The real strength of the Council was present and slowly it has emerged and is becoming the real power which is also true reform, true renewal of the Church.”  But it was the documents of the real Council that authorized and encouraged the prayer meeting at Assisi, the New Mass, the bureaucratic tyranny of bishops’ conferences, the appointment of women chancellors of diocese, etc., etc.  What Pope Benedict evidently cannot accept, even after two years of detailed documentation presented in the doctrinal discussions with the Society of St. Pius X, is that it was the documents of the real Council that contained the time bombs whose shrapnel is now imbedded all over our Church in crisis.  The media and journalists only reported, with glee and celebration, what the Council said and what the popes following it implemented in its name.  The last fifty years is simply the natural consequence of the ideas and expressions issued by the Council.  It is this hard truth which the retiring Council Theological Expert does not want to hear.  It seems he is willing to keep the unjust internal exile of the SSPX in place, notwithstanding an apparently strong personal desire to end the injustice, because he will not face the terrible crisis that was the Second Vatican Council. 

All we can do is pray that God permits the next pope to be someone who is not a man of the Council, but who is willing to call a spade a spade and tell the media: Away with this robber Council; we are going back to Tradition.