Sunday, April 5, 2015
The Wall Street Journal on Vatican II and Pope Francis
By: Michael J. Matt | Editor
From The Wall Street Journal's Article "Pope Francis and the New Rome": "The most radical part of Francis’ papacy is his embrace of the liberalizing principles of Vatican II—from poverty and sexual ethics to church governance.
"Francis has argued that the church’s troubles reflect not recklessness but timidity in interpreting and applying the principles of Vatican II, especially the council’s call for the church to open itself to the modern world.
"The changes [of Vatican II] were dramatic. Rome absolved the Jewish people of collective guilt for the death of Jesus Christ and declared that God’s covenant with them had never been abrogated. Catholics began to hear Orthodox and Protestants described as “separated brethren,” while church leaders spoke of a “fellowship” with non-Christians.
"Francis has argued that the church’s troubles reflect not recklessness but timidity in interpreting and applying the principles of Vatican II, especially the council’s call for the church to open itself to the modern world.
"The changes [of Vatican II] were dramatic. Rome absolved the Jewish people of collective guilt for the death of Jesus Christ and declared that God’s covenant with them had never been abrogated. Catholics began to hear Orthodox and Protestants described as “separated brethren,” while church leaders spoke of a “fellowship” with non-Christians.
"The years following the council brought cultural change to the church, blurring many aspects of Catholic identity. Women ceased to wear veils in church, and Catholics started eating meat on Fridays. Nuns moved from convents to apartments. Interfaith marriage ceased to be taboo. Priests moved from hearing confessions in darkened booths to more conversational settings.
"At the same time, the church in Europe and the U.S. saw a steep decline in attendance at Mass and in adherence to traditional morality, with the sexual revolution and the spread of contraception and legalized abortion. A half-century after the council, the population of nuns in the U.S. has declined by more than 70% and the annual number of priestly ordinations by 50%." READ FULL WSJ ARTICLE HERE
REMNANT COMMENT: So, Pope Francis wants more of this insanity! Why is it that the everyone in the whole world today, even columnists for the Wall Street Journal, can see exactly what's really going on here, what is wrong with Vatican II, and what Pope Francis is all about--except for our friends the neo-Catholics who insist on celebrating the ongoing auto-demolition of the Catholic Church? I can understand if we were still in the reign of John Paul ‘the Great’ and it required foresight to see what was really going on. But now foresight isn't required at all. All you have to do is survey the bombed out ruins of our once mighty Catholic Church and use a little 20/20 hindsight to understand precisely what happened. So what explains the blindness of our brothers and sisters on the neo-Catholic side of the aisle?
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Michael J. Matt | Editor
Michael J. Matt has been an editor of The Remnant since 1990. Since 1994, he has been the newspaper's editor. A graduate of Christendom College, Michael Matt has written hundreds of articles on the state of the Church and the modern world. He is the host of The Remnant Underground and Remnant TV's The Remnant Forum. He's been U.S. Coordinator for Notre Dame de Chrétienté in Paris--the organization responsible for the Pentecost Pilgrimage to Chartres, France--since 2000. Mr. Matt has led the U.S. contingent on the Pilgrimage to Chartres for the last 24 years. He is a lecturer for the Roman Forum's Summer Symposium in Gardone Riviera, Italy. He is the author of Christian Fables, Legends of Christmas and Gods of Wasteland (Fifty Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll) and regularly delivers addresses and conferences to Catholic groups about the Mass, home-schooling, and the culture question. Together with his wife, Carol Lynn and their seven children, Mr. Matt currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.