(LifeSiteNews) — Personally, I do make a distinction between Vatican I, which presented an infallible dogmatization, and Vatican II, which avowedly wanted to be (only) a pastoral council. It is understandable that it wanted to incorporate the top statements of Vatican I into the collegiality of the bishops in order to achieve a certain balance in the relationship between the pope and bishops. This does not mean that one could or can cut back on the content of the First Vatican Council.
However, even in my youth I noticed that many passages of Vatican II are open to interpretation and have a very strong character of compromise or a certain ambiguity, which bothered me even then. I was a 20-year-old novice. As an altar boy, I experienced how brutally and excessively a liturgical reform was enforced that was neither intended by the Council Fathers nor can be inferred from the texts.
As an altar boy, I was retrained from the old to the new rite. It was the commissions (Bugnini) rather than the Council Fathers who were at work. Certainly, some went home from the council in order to interpret the leeway offered by the council texts as broadly as possible. Over time, Ratzinger and Wojtyla also took a more critical view of this. Today, unfortunately, many people are turning away from the texts themselves, even where they should adhere to the council.
I think that back then (the 1960s), as in the secular sphere (progressivism), there was an exaggerated enthusiasm and confidence in ecumenism. We can no longer move forward with this generation. Today’s young believers, as I was able to see very well as a young bishop, know nothing about the council and are not interested in it. They have hardly read any of the texts, but feel attracted to the old liturgy [the Traditional Latin Mass] without being ideological. There is also a clear conservative turn in the young clergy as a reaction to the last 50 years of “church reform.”
I believe that Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI were still far too strongly biographically interwoven with Vatican II to be able to face the generation of tomorrow with a greater inner freedom. I am quite critical of some things in the pontificate of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. However, with his call for a hermeneutic of continuity instead of that of rupture, the latter has clearly grasped the problem since Vatican II. Cardinal [Leo Jozef] Suenens spoke of a revolution similar to the French Revolution, which destroyed the Catholic social order of the “Ancien régime.”
When it comes to ecumenism, I have long since ceased to share the council’s optimism. The efforts have only improved the atmosphere but have not brought unity. We have also dismantled much of our Catholic substance everywhere and put it up for discussion without any real church unity emerging. The divisions are even continuing (cf. the Anglican Church; the Coptic Church’s withdrawal since Fiducia supplicans; the break between the Greek Orthodox (Bartholomew) and the Russian Orthodox Church (Cyril); Ukraine/Kiev and Moscow/Cyril; the divisions within the Catholic Church under this pontificate (cf., e.g., the reactions of entire bishops’ conferences to Fiducia supplicans). All this could get even worse.
Vatican II, with its pastoral, rather anti-dogmatic approach, is to be understood in the context of its time and must be read in a somewhat more differentiated way today, while on the other hand (this is my point), the dogmatization of the Petrine office retains a certain timeless normativity to which we cannot make any concessions in order to develop an exercise of the Petrine office that falls short of the content and wording of the dogma. A historical re-reading of this council, which is also possible, must therefore not throw the baby out with the bathwater through a so-called re-wording. That would not be progress. I am convinced that unity only exists in the (full) truth. As long as the latter is not achieved, it remains non-existent. “Love” cannot change this.
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In all dialogues, we must start from the truth and remain in it. However, just as in society, feelings and interests (power) often prevail, not objective truth.
Personally, I would rather strive for cooperation and propagate this agreement in matters such as peace, where agreement can be reached. But to think that we could bring Protestant denominations (communities) back to a unity of faith with us through consensus talks without them converting to the Catholic faith remains an illusion for me. After all, they avowedly want to remain Protestants and not return to ecumenism. “So they did nothing wrong in the 16th century.”
It is just as hopeless with the Orthodox in another way. If they cannot achieve unity among themselves, how can they achieve it with us, of all people, and with one more patriarchate? I believe that “Vicar of Christ” is also listed among the historical titles in the Annuario Pontificio. Why? And why does “Patriarch of the West” of all things appear in it again? The Pentecostals are expanding self-confidently and are probably convinced that we secularized Catholics no longer really believe. The Orthodox think so too, who often treat us like a sect at the grassroots level, at least when you are traveling abroad.
I expect unity from Christ, Who will come again in glory. Argumentatively, as in the previous form of ecumenism, which always assumes that the others can remain with themselves, just like us, this unity is simply not to be had or achieved (argumentatively; consensus discussions). I have never been able to convince anyone of anything by argument if grace had not first given him inner insight before I had even opened my mouth to him. Saul was converted by the inner light, not by Ananias’ arguments.
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We must not deconstruct the truth to any (partial) aspects of it, e.g., breaking down the Resurrection to “the cause of Jesus continues” in order to win over the Athenians (up to this point they would probably have agreed), for whom the whole, crude truth of the bodily Resurrection of Jesus was the reason for leaving the dialogue (about this another time). If we were to do the same with the Petrine office, that would definitely be a mistake for me. In other words: honorary primacy; ministry of love; presiding at synods and councils; moderation; mediator; mouthpiece; primus inter pares; etc.
All this affirmed (i.e. accepted), but without key power in the sense of Vatican I, i.e., without jurisdiction and power of definition over the whole Church (in this case rather understood as communio ecclesiarum). For me, this would be a deconstructed truth that has been downgraded in the way described, and which, moreover, was infallibly defined at Vatican I, but which is not accepted by separated Christians (maximum demand).
The proponents could reply: “But at least we have achieved something, a primacy of honor.” My answer: but not unity in truth. And also in many other visible areas we remain as divided and contradictory as before. If this is what John Paul II had in mind with his offer (Ut unum sint 95), then in my opinion he was as wrong as when he kissed the Koran. Unless one typically abstracts from the truth (i.e., from one’s own claim to truth) and sees in this gesture only a declaration of honor towards that which is sacred to the other (but not to me). Nevertheless, how can you kiss the Gospel in the liturgy and the Koran in a meeting, especially when you know how Muslims see or interpret it?