In his March 26, 1961 pastoral letter from Dakar, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre began by echoing a message from John XXIII:

“His Holiness Pope John XXIII’s Christmas Letter to the world this year was on the subject of ‘Truth.’ I should like to re-echo for this diocese the Holy Father’s most timely message, and to draw your attention, my dear people, to the necessity to flee from error and the sources of error, and to be wholeheartedly attached to the truth which the Church teaches.” (Pastoral Letters: 1947-1968, p. 114)

When Archbishop Lefebvre wrote these words, it was still over a year before John XXIII opened Vatican II. It surely never would have occurred to him that the Council would do anything that would make it more likely that souls would fall into error. By the time he died on March 25, 1991, though, Archbishop Lefebvre had spent almost thirty years battling the errors propagated in the name of Vatican II.

Archbishop Lefebvre’s Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) recently marked the fiftieth anniversary of the famous “1974 Declaration,” one of the most important milestones of the archbishop’s war against the errors propagated in the name of Vatican II. In his message reflecting on the 1974 Declaration, the SSPX’s Superior General, Father Davide Pagliarani, wrote that the “reforms of the Council” constitute a “clearly identified enemy” in an ongoing doctrinal battle:

“It is a doctrinal battle, against a clearly identified enemy: the reforms of the Council, presented as a poisoned entity, conceived in error and leading to error. It is its fundamental spirit that is called into question, and consequently everything that this spirit produced: ‘This Reformation, stemming from Liberalism and Modernism, is poisoned through and through; it derives from heresy and ends in heresy, even if all its acts are not formally heretical. It is therefore impossible for any conscientious and faithful Catholic to espouse this Reformation or to submit to it in any way whatsoever. The only attitude of faithfulness to the Church and Catholic doctrine, in view of our salvation, is a categorical refusal to accept this Reformation.’”

Both in the words of Fr. Pagliarani and those quoted from Archbishop Lefebvre, we see the insistence that the “reforms” springing from the Council originated in heresy (or error) and end in heresy. For this reason, according to Archbishop Lefebvre, the “only attitude of faithfulness to the Church” is a “categorical refusal to accept this Reformation.”

How does this notion that we must refuse to accept the “Reformation” of Vatican II relate to the question of how we should think about the Council itself? To evaluate this, we can examine (a) how Vatican II differed from other councils, and (b) some of the consequences of that difference.

According to Michael Davies, the Council could have imposed definitive teaching with the authority of the Extraordinary Magisterium, but it did not do so.

How Did Vatican II Differ from Other Ecumenical Councils?

In his The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty, Michael Davies explained one component of what made Vatican II unique among Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church:

“What is the precise legal authority of the documents of Vatican II? The Council itself was undoubtedly an authentic Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church. It is necessary to stress this because a few confused individuals, claiming to be traditional Catholics, have gone to the extreme of questioning the Council’s legitimacy. Thus, as a General Council, teaching in conformity with the Pope, Vatican II was in a position to impose definitive teaching with the authority of the Extraordinary Magisterium, which would demand our absolute internal assent. But it did not do so. . . [T]he Council deliberately refrained from imparting to any of its documents the infallible status of the Extraordinary Magisterium.” (p. 253)

So, according to Michael Davies, the Council could have imposed definitive teaching with the authority of the Extraordinary Magisterium, but it did not do so.

In his Against the Heresies, Archbishop Lefebvre added a related component of why Vatican II was unique:

“Why was Liberalism able to win at the Council? Because it was a ‘pastoral’ council. Had it been a dogmatic council, the Holy Ghost would have prevented Liberalism from prevailing; but it was a pastoral council that was not intended to define truths. John XXIII and Paul VI asserted this repeatedly. It was the only instance in the history of the Church that a council was ‘pastoral.’ The Church had only convened councils in order to define or make more explicit certain truths against the errors that were being spread throughout the world. What the Council Fathers could and should have condemned was Communism, for example.” (p. 126)

So, not only did Vatican II refrain from imposing any definitive teaching, as Michael Davies explained, it was characterized by John XXIII and Paul VI as a “pastoral” council rather than a dogmatic council. There was no justification for John XXIII and Paul VI to make this distinction if they did not thereby intend for the Council Fathers who participated in the Council, and all Catholics who study it, to draw rational conclusions from the distinction. It is therefore nonsensical to imagine that Vatican II set forth any definitive teaching when the leaders of the Council insisted that it would not do so.

As important as the explanations from Archbishop Lefebvre and Michael Davies are, though, they do not of themselves tell us what we should think about the Council. It could still be the case, for example, that a Council could be full of holy and entirely orthodox wisdom even though it did not define anything. To explore how we should think about Vatican II, we must look more closely at the consequences of its refusal to invoke the authority of the Extraordinary Magisterium.

The liberal architects of the Council made use of Vatican II’s pastoral nature to introduce heterodox ideas through ambiguous language.

Consequences of Vatican II Being a Pastoral Council

As a general matter, the teaching authority of the Church functions not only to promulgate truths of the Faith but also to expose and condemn errors opposed to the Faith. So although a refusal to invoke the Extraordinary Magisterium could in theory mean that Vatican II simply had nothing to teach — which invites the question of why they would have the Council to begin with — it could also suggest that the Council’s architects wanted to avoid the level of scrutiny that would block any errors they wanted to promote.

We have one notable indicator of the latter motive through Archbishop Lefebvre’s November 27, 1962 intervention at Vatican II, in which he encouraged his fellow Council Fathers to express the Council’s teaching in a “dogmatic and scholastic” form that would help promote precision of thought and expression:

“[I]t is of the highest importance that ‘the whole of traditional Christian doctrine be received in that exact manner, both in thought and form, which is above all resplendent in the Acts of the Council of Trent and of Vatican I,’ according to the very words of the Sovereign Pontiff. So for these very important reasons, it is absolutely essential to maintain these two objectives: to express doctrine in a dogmatic and scholastic form for the training of the learned; and to present the truth in a more pastoral way, for the instruction of other men.” (I Accuse the Council!, p. 5)

He proceeded to suggest two sets of documents: “one more dogmatic, for the use of theologians; the other more pastoral in tone, for the use of others, whether Catholic, non-catholic or non-Christian.” As Archbishop Lefebvre recounted, the proposal was not well-received:

“The proposal met, however, with violent opposition: ‘The Council is not a dogmatic but a pastoral one; we are not seeking to define new dogmas but to put forward the truth in a pastoral way.” (I Accuse the Council!, p. 4)

In hindsight, this excuse for avoiding dogmatic language was preposterous because the Council’s “pastoral” documents are full of such absolutely inscrutable nonsense that relatively few people can fully understand them. Ironically, the documents would have been much more useful for non-theologians if they had been written with the dogmatic language that Archbishop Lefebvre argued would be appropriate for theologians.

Even though the Council was pastoral and avoided using dogmatic language, the liberal Council Fathers could not overtly promote all of the heterodox ideas they wanted to include in the Council’s documents. As a result, they had to resort to ambiguous language, which obviously runs contrary to the ostensible purpose of a “pastoral” council. We have one stunning demonstration of this from Fr. Ralph Wiltgen’s The Inside Story of Vatican II: A Firsthand Account of the Council's Inner Workings (formerly titled The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber) in which he described how the imprudent admission of a liberal participant at the Council exposed the intent to use ambiguous language for devious ends:

“Then one of the extreme liberals made the mistake of referring, in writing, to some of these ambiguous passages, and indicating how they would be interpreted after the Council. This paper fell into the hands of the aforesaid group of cardinals and superiors general, whose representative took it to the Pope. Pope Paul, realizing finally that he had been deceived, broke down and wept. What was the remedy? Since the text of the schema did not positively make any false assertion, but merely used ambiguous terms, the ambiguity could be clarified by joining to the text a carefully phrased explanation. This was the origin of the Preliminary Explanatory Note appended to the schema.”

We need no further proof that the liberal architects of the Council made use of Vatican II’s pastoral nature to introduce heterodox ideas through ambiguous language.

Open any of the Synod’s official documents and you will find that they refer almost exclusively to Vatican II for the “theological” source of their revolutionary ideas. There would be no diabolical Synodal Church were it not for ideas introduced by Vatican II.

Interestingly, Archbishop Lefebvre’s pastoral letter quoted above dealt extensively with the equivocal and ambiguous language that heterodox thinkers were employing prior to the Council. He even quoted John XXIII in this regard:

“These are the considerations which I thought it timely to submit to you, my dear people. I do so in all charity and solicitude, so that the opinions you form may be properly informed, and in accordance with the warning of Our Holy Father Pope John XXIII that ‘Not only is he guilty who deliberately disfigures the truth, but also he who, from fear of not appearing comprehensive and up to date, betrays that truth by the ambiguity of his approach.” (Pastoral Letters: 1947-1968, p. 122)

Thus, John XXIII recognized ambiguity as a great evil prior to the Council. And yet his decision to structure Vatican II as a pastoral (rather than dogmatic) council opened the door for the villains to use ambiguity as the vehicle to introduce the errors that have plagued the Mystical Body of Christ for the past sixty years.

In his message commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Archbishop Lefebvre’s 1974 Declaration, Fr. Pagliarani commented on the damage caused by these errors:

“Begun at the Council, this Reformation is still underway and continues to produce its fruits. Today, through synodality, we are witnessing the complete reversal of the very structure of the Church. The transmission of the Divine Truths, received from the Incarnate Word, is being replaced by a system, of man’s elaboration, in which God Himself no longer has a place, and in which the spirit of man breathes and no longer the spirit of the Holy Ghost. This is a diabolical reversal of the Gospel itself.”

For the past sixty years, the defenders of Vatican II have insisted that the terrible fruits from Vatican II have nothing to do with the Council — no, they tell us, the Council simply has not been implemented properly. As Fr. Pagliarani observed, though, the Synod on Synodality brings the analysis of fruits to a new level because the Synod relies almost entirely on the actual language from the Vatican II documents. Open any of the Synod’s official documents and you will find that they refer almost exclusively to Vatican II for the “theological” source of their revolutionary ideas. There would be no diabolical Synodal Church were it not for ideas introduced by Vatican II. Indeed, the Synodal Church has become the best guide to understanding the meaning of several obscure passages from Vatican II because those passages were intended to pave the way for the Synodal Church.

Given these realities, it is absolutely wicked to assert than any Catholic has even the slightest duty to afford Vatican II any respect beyond acknowledging that it took place.

How Should We Think About Vatican II?

God permitted Vatican II to happen for a reason and He was not “surprised” by what took place during the Council’s sessions, or by the fruits we have seen from the Council. Surely He also expects us to make use of our reason to consider the following undeniable realities:

• Leading up the Vatican II, the popes had warned about the ideas that would play a leading role in shaping the Council’s documents.
• By choosing to characterize Vatican II as a “pastoral” council, John XXIII and Paul VI fostered a situation in which (a) the language used in the Council’s documents was less precise, and (b) the level of scrutiny for such language was lower.
• We have seen sixty years of tremendously bad fruits from Vatican II, while at the same time those who have adhered to Traditional Catholicism have produced comparatively good fruits.
• Now, with the Synod on Synodality, we see that Francis has created a new church — which is a diabolical inversion of the Catholic Church — in the mold envisioned by the innovators of Vatican II.

Given these realities, it is absolutely wicked to assert than any Catholic has even the slightest duty to afford Vatican II any respect beyond acknowledging that it took place. As Archbishop Lefebvre wrote to his flock in Dakar a year before the Council, Catholics must “flee from error and the sources of error.” Vatican II is a source of error, so we must flee from it.

But there is something more that we can learn from the Council. God foresaw from all eternity that Vatican II would operate as a betrayal of true Catholic teaching, and we know that He allows evil for the sake of drawing some good from it. If we choose to pay attention to plainly observable realities, we can draw the following lessons from the Council and its aftermath:

• The pre-Vatican II popes were correct in warning us about the errors that have flourished since the Council, so we ought to study their encyclicals and thank God for allowing us to learn the valuable lessons from them.
• Satan and his minions truly despise the immutable Catholic Faith and will do anything in their power to distort and corrupt it.
• Those who depart from the immutable Catholic Faith go down the path of apostasy and wickedness.
• God blesses those who cooperate with His grace to defend the immutable Catholic Faith.
• Societies need the truth and grace that come from the immutable Catholic Faith and are abandoned to the forces of evil in proportion to the extent to which that Faith is rejected.

As a result, we now have a deeper appreciation for the splendor and necessity of the Faith that God left us in his Catholic Church. Perhaps before the Council there were many Catholics who had lost sight of the fact that this Faith is a precious pearl like no other in the world. Vatican II and its aftermath has demonstrated to us that we must always fight for the immutable Catholic Faith, especially when false shepherds are attacking it. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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