One problem with circular arguments...

... is that they are filled with holes.

A reader submitted a comment (in response to this post), which I'm posting here:

Vatican II is not authoritative and should be tossed in the trashcan.

Vatican II “had avoided proclaiming in an extraordinary manner dogmas affected by the mark of infallibility” - Paul VI, January 12, 1966

Vatican II General Secretary on Nov. 16, 1964: "In view of conciliar practice and the pastoral purpose of the present Council, this sacred Synod defines matters of faith or morals as binding on the Church only when the Synod itself openly declares so." It never did.

Stop defending Vatican II. The so-called "hermeneutic of continuity" expessed by those rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic is also contrary to the Church.

It is a curious form of argument, to say the least—to denounce the Church's authority by appealing to the Church's authority. It's as if someone confided: "I'm much smarter than my brother and two sisters. They're really stupid. Do you know why?"

"Uh, no. Why?"

"Bad genes."

Ironic how certain ultra-liberal and ultra-conservative "Catholics" both insist Vatican II was a radical break from the past, which allows them to ignore the Pope and Magisterium and form their own parallel structure of authority. A classic case of wanting the proverbial cake. (Yep, this one should be good for a few lively responses.)

Comments

[Matt Bettag]

Your posts today are spot on and quite funny. Sarcasm enough to join one of my family get togethers. Keep up the good work.

[Chas]

After researching an MA thesis project on the possibility of the "hermeneutic of continuity", I can sympathize with your interlocutor, but cannot agree with him. On the one hand, it is disingenuous to deny that the "Spirit of Vatican II" existed at the time of the Council and that the documents are completely unaffected by it. On the other hand, on the basis of sound theological principles and with the support of post-conciliar magisterial authority, we can and we must interpret the documents with a hermeneutic of continuity.

[Jack]

I just think it was kind of a mediocre council. The council documents themselves tend to be verbose and flowery, and leave room for ambiguous interpretations, especially Nostra Aetate. I believe John XXIII died despairing of the council when he saw how the Church's enemies were using it, and he himself declared it a pastoral and not a dogmatic council.

That said, it's a mistake to reject it as Carl notes. But there's also no reason to act as though it's the only council in the 2,000 history of the Church. I mean, let's talk about Vatican I for a while...

[Carl E. Olson]

Thanks, Matt!

[Raving Papist]

I agree with Jack. I'd have more sympathy for the Vatican II groupies if they ever talked about any council other than the 2nd Vatican Council. The way some of their effusive praise is written, the day of Pentecost first occurred in the 1960's and between Christ's resurrection and then God was still moving over the waters of the deep.

[Jack]

Yes John XXIII was effectively the first pope after Peter. All the others were hopelessly lost and confused in pre-Vatican II times. No one knew what the heck was going on, or what Christianity was all about. So sad.

The mere fact that everyone, including Benedict XVI, has to talk about a "hermeneutic of continuity" with respect to Vatican II is proof that the documents are ambiguous.

[LJ]

Jack; I think it is proof at least that there were many who seized upon the fact of the council to promote an agenda not at all in the documents themselves. If there could be any complaint with the council itself I might be inclined to think there was a certain naivete about the size and ferocity of the faction already existing in the Church who wanted to transform it into something it is not.
Had the council been able to see how it would be used as a springboard for all manner of heterdoxy, perhaps those present such as Wojtyla and Ratzinger would have insisted upon more clarity, considering that it became their charge to apply the council.

The purpose of the council is well described by Bushman in Carl's post above. My reading of the VII documents leads me to agree with Bushman, but I would put it more bluntly (perhaps less accurately). Having come from an Evangelical background and essentially studied my way into the Church, what struck me was that there is a certain territory of personal faith that had been gradually ceded to the descendants of Luther, et. al. The drum-beat of Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura and the many trends away from liturgy and sacraments to experiential religion (Sola Sentio?) I believe created a counter self-definition in the Catholic Church that underplayed those elements to detrimental effect. The idea of holiness is the Catholic wholistic approach to re-incorporating those elements back into the mainstream of the Church, wholistic because it wants to guard against the excesses and theological errors that arise with a wholesale abandonment to experience-based faith like many practice in the Evangelical Protestant groups to varying extremes.

Yet, in practice there is a distinctly Catholic tradition of intense life-giving personal faith right back to the Apostles. The problem is that in our time the Reformers and their fellow travelers essentially own the terminology of personal saving faith and therefore dominate the theology in the public square. In fact, if you look into it closely, this is at the core of much of their doubt that Catholics are even Christian. "Have you been saved, brother?" And the challenge for the Catholic Church is to bring Catholic theology to the fore within the Church without succombing to the popular terminology and its attending errors.

That is where "conversion of heart" and "interior conversion" become the Catholic terms to denote the experience of the work of the Holy Spirit within us that the Evangelical preacher refers to when he talks of "getting saved" but without his theological errors about justification or his simplistic formulations that miss so many of the subtleties of the Holy Spirit's work in our hearts. His faith is largely and in the first place experience based. Our challenge, in distingusihing ourselves theologically is not to throw out the experience that is truly part of our own faith. In the past, I think that ground was too easily turned over.

Another example of terminology is our use of the term "renewal". The term "revival" is perhaps a better one but the Evangelicals own it, and it means a very different theology.

This is also at the core of the accusation that Catholics believe in a "works" religion. Theologically we don't, but in practice it may appear that way and when we add in the de-emphasis of the experience of the Holy Spirit working in our personal lives that seems to have characterized the past, to the experienced-based non-Catholic the case seems self-evident, particularly at the level of the every-day Catholic. And have we not relegated this aspect of personal experience to the mystics and saints in the past, as something not particularly relevant to the common Catholic?

And since the council there is the other side who have rushed headlong into another error of some Protestants, who in their total commitment to experience-based faith have narrowed that down to a subset of "manifestations of the Holy Spirit" almost to the exclusion of any other experience of the Holy Spirit in many cases, when such things are simply a sign, a marker, and as St. Paul says, the least of all of what the Holy Spirit has for us, important only in pointing us to the greater. Yet such thinking has taken some Catholics from one extreme to the other, and still, it seems to me, missed the larger vision of the council, the true internal transformation of the everyday lay Catholic that JPII envisioned in the Call to Holiness.

That is the force of the New Evangelization for which I believe the council was intended to lay the groundwork.

[Jack]

Well said and I agree with your comments especially about ceding ground. Vatican II resulted in a needlessly defensive, and ultimately apologetic, attitude on the part of the Church toward the world. This is not what the documents called for of course, but it has been the result. It was as if it became time in 1962 for the Church to apologize for her existence and her claim to be the only church established by Jesus Christ. What is that Old Testament phrase? If the leader blows an uncertain trumpet, who shall follow? In my opinion it might be a nice change of pace if the Church confidently asserted her claim to be the only true Church of Christ; the normal means of getting to Heaven; the sole possessor of the fullness of Christ's presence on earth in the sacraments (all seven). This is what had drawn millions to her in the past and would do so now.