For the last couple months I was too happy to have had the desire for self-harming. However, now that I am not in Rome anymore I ventured over to the Fishwrap and revisited the darkness of self-inflicted irritation.
Sr. Joan Chittister, incredibly still writing (in more than one sense), has finally unlocked the secret to what’s been going on since Vatican II.
Fishwrap shares with us her razor sharp observations and the polished steel traps of her reasoning. Who better than she, with her vast experience of the LCWR, the Council of Elders, Oprah, and her triumphs in Tahir Square and Zuccotti Park?
The title might shock you a little.
Nothing really changed after Vatican II. But synodality may make a difference.
Nothing changed after Vatican II?
Let’s explore the cave of the sybil to unpuzzle the puzzle of her oracle. We have to skip around a little, as usual, to catch the essence.
My emphases and comments:
The word synodality has been around a year or so now and people are still asking what it really means — for them, of course. The last time the church said it was going to make changes was in 1965. Fifty-eight years ago. In the meantime, all the changes to be seen were basically meaningless ones. Not because change was forbidden. On the contrary.
[…]
Whatever changes the people had wanted from the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council were, it seemed, formless, silent, lost in the bustle of a busy church frozen in a medieval mind. Instead, after 400 years without a council of reform, the kinds of changes the people had expected from this council lay yet in Rome, drying in wet ink there and largely ignored here. [What sort of changes did “El Pueblo” want, such that they had been clamoring for a Council to put everything to right? No. Wait. There was no clamor from “the people”. It was forced on them from above.]
[…]
Oh, a few churches redesigned their confession boxes and a few more took down the altar rails, [Apparently those were good things, since people stopped going to confession and stopped showing reverence to the Eucharist.] but really, other than that and the move to the vernacular in all liturgical events — nothing much did happen. [She doesn’t get it. Change how people pray and you change what they believe. Clueless. ] Most of the changes were window dressing. [Those things were insignificant? What would have been significant?]
[…]
The two popes, John XXIII and Paul VI, who had led the way to these times died. The popes who had called the Second Vatican Council to bring the church into the modern world lived on in the hearts of the new church in the pews. [New church need Newspeak.]
But both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI resisted the full force of Vatican II. Though they never denounced the council, they never really promoted it either. [JP2 and B16 didn’t “denounce” Vatican II! But, can you sense that Sr. Joan’s piece is about to trans?]
This synodality is different. [It sure is.] This time, Pope Francis is having the faithful themselves become part of the agenda-making process before the synod even convenes. The laity has been invited into the intellectual theology of the church rather than simply poised to bring pious concern to the event. [Because who better than the laity, with their deeply formed sensus fidelium over the last 50+ years, to enter into the “intellectual theology” of the church.]
This time, the laity themselves have been deemed to determine what topics must be considered — married priests, genderism, marriage theology, equality, women priests, whatever. They will be allowed to speak to what 99% of the church rather than the 1% of the church, its clerics, allow to be heard. [That pesky %1! Cause that’s what shepherds do with their flocks: “Okay, you guys decide what you are going to do today. I’ll just go wherever you want.]
In fact, churches all around the world have been gathering and detailing the items the people themselves want to see considered for timeliness, for growth, for equality. [At this point we get a glimpse into what shapes these effusive musings:] The German church, [She got that miniscule right!] in fact, has gone so far as to film the gathering of the topics from German congregations that will be sent to Rome as the skeleton for these discussions.
Two weeks ago, I sat in front of my television for several hours and listened to the topics each of the dioceses wanted addressed at the synod in Rome. [And there it is.] One at a time, representatives from the entire region read out the topics and the numbers of their groups who most wanted particular topics to be considered by the modern church at this new conciliar process called “synodality.”
I got a chill. [… ! …] I was listening to a drumbeat of human issues that were separating people from the church, from support, from holiness in this day and age. [Someone get this woman a purple-ink pen. No, wait… ] The drone I was hearing was clearly the drone of the Holy Spirit: “Group A: Married priests … women priests … deaconesses …” — topics from every nook and cranny in the area over and over again.
Francis had managed to involve Catholics around the globe in this common search for communal and spiritual growth.
[…]
The rest is… well… a waste of more time.
I shared Sister’s prophetic message with a couple of friends. Of course two are crippled because they are firmly part of that 1%. The representative of the pews in our group isn’t exactly clamoring for a total overhaul. But here is something of what came up.
After sending them the link to the article (with some editing)
Cleric 1: We fear change.
Layman: Wait. “Nothing really changed”?!? I thought Pentecost only happened sometime after 1965!! That we got everything wrong from 33AD to the 1960s!!! That as Roche says the theology of the Mass changed and so on!!! Now they tell me?!?
Cleric 1: The rationes seminales hidden in Vatican II now sprout and bear abundant fruit everywhere, for those who have woke eyes and see.
Layman: That must be it. Ignorant non-woke laymen like me get easily confused. I don’t hear “the spirit” much less understand his “surprises”. And I can’t even read Syriac manuscripts (in the rain) at the Gregorian U library!
Cleric 2: They’ve lain dormant all this time. But, with lots of “fertilizer” they’ve woked!
Layman: Reminds me of the cyclical “leaps forward” of the communists or the great “transitions” of the EU. Every time socialism fails it’s always because a) sabotage b) it wasn’t “true” socialism, or it wasn’t “socialist enough” and we need more of it, faster. So now the Synoding Synod on Synodal Synodality will “reveal” the “true spirit” of Vatican II and bring about the “change” we’ve been waiting for 20 centuries. More altar girls, more guitars, more envirowhackoism, more turning away from Calvary, more degrading of the priestly vocation, more weakening of the marital bond, more confusion on all level, more sodomy. Got it.
And as usual, ideological misrepresentations of reality deliver the opposite of what they promise. 60 years later, normal Catholics who actually read Vatican II with a discerning but loyal eye, can see it at work in solid NO or even more in traditional communities. Participation in liturgy? Lay empowerment? Youth involvement? Large families? Dynamic engagement with the world? Charitable activities? Continuity? Stewardship of the heritage of the Church? Study of doctrine? Pride of place for Gregorian chant and polyphony? You name it. But it is precisely those solid NO or traditional communities, those heroic priests and families, the last remaining reliable theologians and bishops that the rainbow camarilla would like to eradicate from the Church.
Cleric 1: You are not happy… very suspicious. But everything is good all the time and getting better still, so do not be afraid of change.
See? Even the 1% can come around. Thanks Sr. Joan!
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Father this is not directed at you in particular.. but how do those of us who are trying to be faithful stop pretending that we have one faith any longer.. the last 10 years has been the culmination of the misapplication of VII and I know longer understand what this whack job of a nun, and this pope talk about or stand for.
Never in my 65 years of life did I think I would feel this about a church I used love and stand for.
Now in every corner there is a disaster.
“They will be allowed to speak to what 99% of the church rather than the 1% of the church, its clerics, allow to be heard.” – well, to be fair, it was from that 1% that we got V2 and all of its “fruits” . . . .
“The drone I was hearing was clearly the drone of the Holy Spirit: “Group A: Married priests … women priests … deaconesses …” – ahhhhh, there it is!
Two observations:
1) When I looked at a summary report of the meetings held in my diocese, I noticed something: the 1% were very heavily over-represented. And while I wasn’t at any of the meetings, I would bet BIG MONEY those clerics were a significant source of the elements of nonsense and retread issues that found there way into the report.
A fair amount of evidence points to the 99% being less and less the source of the agitation for ordaining women and married men, and overthrowing the virtue of chastity. So, Sister has a point, without realizing it: the 1% are exercising too much influence!
2) I am always astounded at how readily and incautiously “progressives” are to claim to know the will and work of the Holy Spirit in all events. I would like to ask them about this. What special charism or power has been given you, that the teachings of the Church never speak of anyone having?
This is beyond inspiration — which was given the human authors of Scripture; because as I recall (perhaps mis-recall), the Church has never asserted that every human author of Scripture was certain that they were inspired. Saint Paul makes comments in his letters that suggest this: he speaks of a particular point as coming from him, not the Lord; yet it is Scripture, so the Church later judged that Paul was too modest.
But progressives do not suffer from this same modesty! They always know what the Holy Spirit wants; coincidentally, what they themselves want.
How can people be so un-self-aware?
Saw a smart guy, usually intelligent thoughts, make this connection: the Church used to (before VII) use the penal side of Canon Law sometimes, but since the 60’s it has been almost never, and even when done, it takes forever and the penalties were the lightest ever. Now, though, punishment is swift and hard, even harsh. Even more, the times are a-changin’, in that now when punishment happens, it is hum-ho, no big deal, time to get on with life, whereas when the Vatican “penalized” Hans Kung (all it did was relieve him of the right to teach theology, he still taught, in another department), it was “news” for decades and still gets people rile up about “heavy-handed” authority… but the game has changed and use of authority isn’t doing that any more. His point seemed to be that the pendulum has swung back in the other direction.
But he got the essence of the change completely wrong: What is happening is this: if authority is used (lightly and after much care) to punish liberals and heretics, that’s BAD. Berate such “authoritarian” and “despotic” behavior, and show it in the worst possible light. If authority is used to (harshly and peremptorily) punish “right wing extremists” (i.e. anyone who believes in what the Church taught before 1965), nothing to see here, move along, just ordinary business as usual. It’s just the standard shell-game of the cultural marxists, applied to internal Church structures: heads I win, tails you lose. The pendulum hasn’t swung in the least, now the liberals/heretics are using the tools of authority to suppress orthodoxy, whereas they used to scream bloody murder about ANY use of authority, because they were hypocrites all along and never believed that it was per se wrong to suppress teaching, only wrong to suppress them.
Sr. Chitters*itter’s comment about John Paul II “never really promoting” VII was an outright lie: He never failed to refer to VII’s documents in his own writings, usually ad nauseam. If you read his works without careful attention, you would have gotten the impression that VII produced about 1/2 of the entirety of all theology (outside of the Bible). He just didn’t refer to the “spirit of VII” all that much, which I am sure irritated the likes of her.
The Archdiocese of Chicago report just came right out and said that the direction of the synod is already determined, and that some of the people who were consulted get it and some don’t: “Four groups – religious communities and ecumenical leaders, as well as Hispanics, the incarcerated and, whom Pope Francis might characterize as ‘on the margins’ – offer some seeds of hope. Together, these groups seem to have grasped the directions and hopes for the synod on synodality as well as a path forward for the Church. The two groups from the margins or edges of our local Church are the Consejo Hispano (the Hispanic Council of the AoC representing Hispanic Catholics) and Kolbe House (representing incarcerated persons). The women religious and ecumenical leaders represent a diversity of congregations. A discernment process does not depend on tallying the number of people who take a certain position. Discernment relies ultimately not primarily on the quantity of responses but on the quality of resonance with the movements of the Holy Spirit. In this light, it is clear that these four groups offer good insight into where the Lord might be leading the Church today and into the future.”
To Eugene- God has got this. All of it. We know how the story ends, with the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart. Thomas a’ Kempis said it best: With the Cross you can win a Kingdom.
“Self-inflicted irritation” is an excellent phrase and an unfortunately common attitude these days. I’d like to borrow the phrase (and try not to live down to it)
It seems the Holy Grail for the progressives is to remake the Church into a mainline Protestant denomination with more women conducting “services”, more promotion of sodomy and trans, and less Jesus on the Cross. How is that working out for the mainline Protestants? They seem to be withering away into oblivion.
Most people who know me would find this shocking but after reading the article and “Your Commnents” I have nothing to say. You hit it all.
I live in Virginia in the Diocese of Arlington. It’s not perfect but by and large the Spirit of Vatican 2-drum beaters have been side-lined by holy priests and lay people who want to live the faith. The hammer has come down on the worst non-sense (for instance, a staff person lectured on the feminity of God during an RCIA class and a complaint to the chancery generated an actual, honest to goodness inquisition in the best sense.). Thank God for that!
@ Johntenor: I did live in that diocese, for 30 years. You are right, much is going right there – far more than in most dioceses in the US.
Unfortunately, the diocese has no control whatsoever over who will be appointed bishop, the pope does. And while sometimes popes appoint decent or even good guys, bad popes usually don’t, and even fairly good popes have been woefully deficient in this department for quite a long time. Bishop Loverde was (too all appearances) severely deficient in his mis-management of gay seminary issues facing the diocese (and the Church). The current bishop, it seems, not only bent down to embrace and enforce the apparent constraints of Traditionis Custodes at face value (instead of minimizing the effects with all possible efforts), he employed even more harsh rules than TC itself actually required. This will certainly have importantly unfortunate effects in the diocese. One hopes that priests there will figure out how to get around those constraints without getting cancelled, but it seems overly optimistic to be confident that they will. What will the local church be like in 20 years with more bishops like this? How will new priests be formed in orthodoxy – like the current priests were – by strong exposure to the Vetus Ordo and the theology that was taught during the reign of the Vetus Ordo’s period, if the bishops repress that?