False Theologies of the 'Spirit of Vatican II' Continue
The spurious "spirit of Vatican II" and the theologies fabricated in its name unfortunately live on. In the letters column of a Denver paper a writer who identifies herself as a "Roman Catholic" misinforms readers thus: "Bread is a 'symbol' of the body of Christ, just as wine is a 'symbol' of the blood of Christ. We don't literally drink blood at Communion."
The writer was incensed at a story from New Jersey printed widely in the media about a First Holy Communion in which non-wheat substance given an allergic first communicant was declared invalid, undoubtedly because of an invalid substance being used in the attempted consecration.
For the letter writer that was inconsequential because of her understanding of a purely symbolic meaning to the elements of the Eucharist, a belief shared, incidentally, by most Protestants who continue having Communion "services," but of course not the sacrament. She was angered at the "moronic" stance of the bishop who ruled against the validity, calling it a "twisting of canon law to marginalize those who have not already been alienated."
Of course, it wasn't a matter of canon law, but of ecclesiastical doctrine that holds only wheat bread and wine are matter for consecration, by which they become Christ's actual Body and Blood, those being the realities received by communicants, who also worship them as being Divinity Itself:
I can't say for certain how the writer got an opposite idea. But she could well have been educated in post-Vatican II theologies that influenced students in high schools, colleges, and seminaries, and which younger members of various religious communities believed so firmly as to refuse to genuflect before tabernacles or to attend benediction with the Blessed Sacrament.
The theories were called "transsignification" and "transfinalization." These held that any changes in the eucharistic bread and wine happened at its reception, when the "sign values" became Christ's body and blood and the elements received got a new "purpose" of spiritual, rather than just bodily, nourishment. Thus the eucharistic elements remained just bread and wine after consecration, and took on new "meanings" when consumed by those of "faith."
What prompts my thoughts about a relationship between these notions that took hold after Vatican II and went unrebuked in any meaningful way by bishops and this sad example of "non-doctrine" by a Catholic letter writer is an essay by Auxiliary Bishop Richard J. Sklba of Milwaukee. The essay concerns his "vision" of the council and his concern that such vision is kept "clearly and correctly." The bishop's commentary appeared in a recent issue of The Catholic Herald. To do so he recommends "reclaiming" three purposes he ascribes to the Pope who called the council — Blessed Pope John XXIII:
"• purification and renewal of the Catholic Church itself;
"• a serious sustained outreach toward unity among the various Christian churches, and
"• a determination to bring the transforming power of the Gospel into the full range of modern life."
Bishop Sklba calls those the Pope's major goals, along with a fourth that arose later, "the study of the nature of the church itself." In his recommended "reclamation" of these goals, Bishop Sklba returns to the documents of the council, but as a task of being open to "other contrasting convictions as well as our own." He explains: "Too often each party [in the Church] has gone into its own trajectory, and lost the doctrinal and pastoral tension preserved in the documents themselves." The bishop, by the way, thinks it will take 40 more years or so to "implement" the council by bishops' transmitting its vision through teachers of those who will "grow into maturity and leadership in the church."
Since Bishop Sklba doesn't present exactly what that "vision" of Vatican II is, it is difficult to grasp just what he thinks the future and final implementation of the council will bring. But in what he presents and fails to present of Pope John's wishes and desires of the matter, we can get an idea about that "vision." It is of a "renewed" and "purified" Church to which other Christian churches have been attracted by that action, all working toward imbuing modern life with the Gospel.
Now, some things Pope John actually said and the texts actually resulting from the council call into question the vision as Bishop Sklba presents it, so that obviously it might be not fully faithful to the council to make such vision the universal, much less the official, one. So let us do here some reclamation work of our own regarding Pope John XXIII and the council. A good place to start is with the convocation of the council by an apostolic constitution from Pope John, Humanae Salutis, dated December 25, 1962.
In Humanae Salutis the Pope immediately points out that the divine presence Christ promised the world before His Ascension is fulfilled in the Church always, but "is noticeable above all in the most grave periods of humanity. It is then that the Spouse of Christ [the Church] shows itself in all its splendor as the master of truth and minister of salvation."
The Pope immediately contrasts that with what he identifies as "a crisis underway within society":
"While humanity is on the edge of a new era, tasks of immense gravity and amplitude await the Church, as in the most tragic periods of its history. It is a question in fact of bringing the modern world into contact with the vivifying and perennial energies of the Gospel, a world which exalts itself with its conquests in the technical and scientific fields, but which brings also the consequences of a temporal order which some have wished to reorganize excluding God" (emphasis added).
The Pope ended this part of his convoking document by noting "a completely new and disconcerting fact: the existence of a militant atheism which is active on a world level," obviously one he saw supported by exaltation of technology and science.
He then summarizes his reason for calling the council:
"In the face of this twofold spectacle — a world which reveals a grave state of spiritual poverty and the Church of Christ, which is still so vibrant with vitality — we, from the time we ascended to the supreme pontificate, despite our unworthiness and by means of an impulse of Divine Providence, have felt immediately the urgency of the duty to call our sons together to give the Church the possibility to contribute more efficaciously to the solution of the problems of the modern age."
It surely must be questioned, now halfway along in Bishop Sklba's 70-year term for implementing the council, if those in charge of that task have not put more emphasis on the Church's becoming worldly, rather than the world becoming more spiritual and moral? And is this not the result of a false vision, one viewing a chimeric "spirit of Vatican II" rather than the substance of the council itself? Are not the present moral scandals within the Church more a descent into a worldly swamp rather than a soaring above it?
The "spirit of Vatican II" obviously contributed nothing to a filling in of that swamp with Christian asceticism and respect for chastity, all the while new theologies tolerated by the bishops taught that individual acts were never mortally sinful, since they didn't reflect a "fundamental option" for the evil involved. This, taught widely as part of counciliar "renewal," in fact declared that no acts are themselves evil, but only a final choice by those once considered "sinners" to make them so.
Then, on October 11, 1962, in his address opening the council, Pope John XXIII identified the most "major" of all that great meeting's purposes:
"The greatest concern of the ecumenical council is this: that the Sacred Deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously. That doctrine embraces the whole of man, composed as he is of body and soul. And since he is a pilgrim on this earth, it commands him to end always toward Heaven."
Obviously the Pope wanted the council to frame an apologetic conserving and defending what the Church has always taught, but suggesting ways to make such teaching more recognized and respected. Whatever "purification" of the Church might be called for, it would necessarily refer to the latter task, not the body of Church doctrine itself. That was Pope John XXIII's vision. He demanded it be the council's as well.
If this first and foremost part of Pope John XXIII's conciliar vision is omitted, then any vision without it is bound to be blurred and misleading. Indeed, only recently has there begun to emerge theological treatment that is in keeping with the full and true vision of the Pope. The first theological response to the council was a betrayal of the Deposit of Faith, rather than its conservation and propagation.
The council affirms this Deposit of Faith as belonging to the Church Christ founded, which in its spiritual elements and visible, hierarchical ones is united — a single reality vivified and built up by Christ's Spirit (Lumen Gentium, n. 8).
"This Church, constituted and organized in the world as society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the Successor of Peter and by the bishops in union with that Successor, although many elements of sanctification and of truth can be found outside of her visible structure. These elements, however, as gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, possess an inner dynamism toward Catholic unity."
This is the council's vision of the Church, and it is in harmony with the Church's own vision of itself from the beginning. An attempt for irenicism's sake to change or expand the True Church to accommodate those of other creeds and confessions and bodies is not part of the true conciliar vision. It is disturbing, therefore, to find no mention of all this when a bishop such as the auxiliary of Milwaukee introduces the topic of the vision of Second Vatican Council. All three of his "major goals" which he has derived from his study of statements of both Pope and council must be seen in conformity with what he had failed to treat as determinative — the other remarks of Blessed Pope John XXIII.
Perhaps Bishop Sklba is aware of them. I hope so, and would be glad to see them stressed by the bishop in The Milwaukee Catholic Herald where his "Vatican II; Holding High The Vision" essay appeared September 9. The emphasis on the word "the" is this columnist's, intended to insist that there can only be one true vision resulting from Vatican II containing nothing that is substantially novel or just revealed, but what has been the Church's vision from the time Christ founded His Church on Peter.
I recommend to Bishop Sklba and all Catholics who wish to adhere to the Church as revealed in its 21st council this paragraph from Pope John XXIII's opening address:
"The Church's solicitude to promote and defend truth derives from the fact that, according to the plan of God, who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth (1 Tim. 2:4), men without the assistance of the whole of revealed doctrine cannot reach a complete and firm unity of minds, with which are associated true peace and eternal salvation" (emphasis added).
This item 6262 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
