Vatican II: For Better or For Worse

'I knew that Christ was the Head of the Church and the Pope was His Vicar on earth but I never thought the time would come when I had to choose between them, but sadly that time has come.'

From Crisis

By David Torkington

When Pope John XXIII should have been calling Catholics to repentance, prayer, and sacrifice, he decided to call a Council to do the impossible.

hen the bishops and their theological advisers met in Rome for the Second Vatican Council, journalists divided the participants into two main groups: Progressives and Conservatives. It was a gross exaggeration because within each group there were many different schools of thought. But, for the sake of the point that I want to make, let the names of these two main opposing groups stand, for in all caricatures there is always more than a grain of truth. 

The progressives tended to look to what was called the New Biblical Theology to do for the forthcoming Council what Scholastic Theology, and more precisely Thomism, had done for the Council of Trent. The conservatives wanted Scholastic Theology, and Thomism in particular, to be the main theology used at the Second Vatican Council. However, there was a spy in the camp in the form of an ultra-progressive group who did not want either the New Biblical Theology or the Old Scholastic Theology. They wanted a totally new theology for the new world in which the Church found herself. 

In their search for a new philosophy that would become the foundation of their new theology, they did not look to ancient Greece and to Aristotle or Plato; instead, they looked to the Soviet Union and to Marx and Lenin. But they did not base their philosophy on how Marxism developed in Russia. Rather, they based it on how it developed in South America. It was from this foundation that what came to be called Liberation Theology emerged.

The members of this faction at the Council looked to Archbishop Hélder Pessoa Câmara as their leader, and they swore an oath to work to make their theology the new theology for the Universal Church. Meanwhile, alongside the Second Vatican Council, another council was being held in Rome by the Jesuits, who also pledged to do likewise under the leadership of their new General, Fr. Pedro Arrupe Gondra, S.J. Arrupe was living only a few miles away from Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb devastated the city. He was the first to go in, with a small medical team, to help the casualties. If this is what capitalism had done, then he wanted no part in it. So, he eventually committed himself and the congregation over which he ruled to Liberation Theology. 

After the Council, the Jesuits and the followers of Archbishop Câmara joined forces to draw together a new theological orientation within the Church that expressed itself in many and various forms. Then, toward the end of the twentieth century, what came to be called the St. Gallen Mafia was formed to change the Church from the inside and from the top down by using “their new egalitarian theology.” They looked to the Jesuit Cardinal Martini as their leader. It was this group who eventually supported the election of Pope Francis as their champion. The regime of like-minded prelates that now rules in Rome is the work of Pope Francis and the ultimate consequence of a Liberation Theology transformed into Modernism-gone-mad.

However, the problem in producing the Council’s finally-accepted documents was that they all had to be couched in such a way that would satisfy all the different dissident groups—who wrangled not just over every sentence but virtually over every word. That is a weakness in all of the factions. Everyone had to believe that the documents could all be interpreted to their own satisfaction. That is why the present regime that now rules in Rome sees its Modernism-gone-mad as the natural consequence of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council—of which they therefore totally approve! At the same time, several ultraconservative groups also believe that they derive their inspiration from the Second Vatican Council!  

However, there was a further and more primary reason why the Vatican documents were doomed to ambiguity, ambivalence, and abstruseness, and that was the primary aim for which we’re told the Council had been called: to facilitate Christian unity to provide a united front with which to confront a modern, pagan world. Therefore, in addition to trying to satisfy and gratify the different schools of thought within the Church, the Council documents would have to satisfy and gratify myriad Protestant sects in the interest of interdenominational diplomacy. 

If these were the reasons why the Council had been called, then on these grounds alone it must be judged a failure. It did not unite the different schools of thought within the Church. And it certainly did not bring about the unity for which Christ prayed at the Last Supper, moments before He went out to die: “So that they may all be one in us Father, as I am in you and You are in Me.” The Gospel makes it quite clear that if a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand (Mark 3:24-27). Whatever the Council did achieve, it certainly did not achieve unity on any but the most basic level. Have Catholics ever been more divided among themselves?

Unity could have been attained had Pope John XXIII pursued God’s will instead of exerting his own by calling a Council. Pope John XXIII should have listened to God, not to himself. It was clearly God’s will, communicated to him by the Mother of God, that the year 1960 should have been the year to call the whole of the Catholic Church back to “repentance, prayer, and sacrifice,” not for considering calling a Council to do the impossible. If God’s will had been done—instead of the will of Pope John—then the worldwide calamities foretold by Our Lady could have been avoided. These calamities were always conditional. 

Now it seems they are inevitable because, since 1960 when the Universal Church should have been called to penitence and prayer on the direct command of God through His mother, nothing has been done by any subsequent authorities in the Church to reverse the damage done—thanks to the heresy of Quietism— to enable us to return to the Faith of our Fathers. The pseudo-mysticism Quietism was condemned in 1687 for leading the faithful back into Protestantism and into gross sexual sins, as can be read in Msgr. Ronald Knox’s book Enthusiasm. 

What is more important than learning “divine loving” that is practiced in contemplation? Before Quietism, Systematic Theology, which teaches the mind to know about God, was always complemented by Mystical Theology, which taught how to love God. The Church will never be what it was—and what God intends it to be—until the two once more complement each other. After the condemnation of Quietism, contemplation—in which “divine loving” is brought to perfection—was thrown out like the baby with the bathwater.

Only the Holy Spirit can bring the unity that has been lost. But even He can only do it through the repentance, the prayer, and the sacrifice that Our Lady of Fatima called upon us to practice once more. Only then can we receive the Holy Spirit to do once again through us what He was sent for in the first place.

One further point: because of the Mystical Theology that was taken out of Catholic spirituality thanks to Quietism, I know of no one at the Second Vatican Council who both understood and practiced the age-old teaching on contemplative spirituality that I have summarized in my books and in my talks—and that includes later popes who took part in the Council. And believe me, it is not for want of looking. Nowhere, for instance, in the otherwise laudable theological works of Pope Benedict XVI that I have read do I find any teaching on the Mystical Theology that disappeared after Quietism.

Somewhere, in a document produced in the 1990s, Pope John Paul II did commend the contemplative life and contemplative prayer; but not at that time, or before or since, did he produce any practical teaching for those looking for spiritual encouragement in contemplative prayer; nor did the popes who immediately preceded him. 

I spent years reading the works of the great biblical theologians who were my mentors, many of whom were present at the Council. But none of them ever wrote about Mystical Theology. I have read most of them. They are great theologians and biblical scholars, like Louis Bouyer, Jean Daniélou, S.J., F.X. Durrwell, Josef Jungmann, the French Dominicans, and too many more to mention. However, none of them dealt with Mystical Theology, and when they tried to, they got it wrong because, like the rest of us, they were all brainwashed and blinded by the anti-mystical rhetoric that was to be found almost everywhere after the condemnation of Quietism. 

The virulent anti-mystical witch hunts that once prevailed have long since gone, but they have achieved their purpose. What remains is a general prevailing ignorance of Mystical Theology without anyone realizing why—and without anyone wanting to know why either; for they believe matters of far greater moment are at the top of the agenda. Once again: What is more important than learning “divine loving” that is practiced in contemplation?

Sadly, the biblical theologians who taught me so much can lead you, as they led me, to the boundaries of the contemplative spirituality that prevailed in the early Church but never into its heart and soul. The strange anomaly is that although you will not find any Mystical Theology in the writings of these biblical theologians in the past, or today for that matter, you do find it in the Scholastic Theologians. In St. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, whom I continually quote in all my books; in St. Bonaventure; in Blessed John Duns Scotus; and in the great Scholastic Mystical Theologian St. John of the Cross. That is why it took me some time to be won over to the excellent works of these biblical theologians, who followed in the footsteps of St. John Henry Newman. 

As a consequence of these truths, the Second Vatican Council produced no documents that detailed the sublime sacrificial and contemplative spirituality that should find its expression in the Sacred Liturgy because it can only be understood by practitioners. For me, this is the greatest tragedy of the Second Vatican Council—and the greatest triumph of the devilry that destroyed contemplative prayer after Quietism. The document on the liturgy was, in many ways, one of the greatest triumphs of the Council. But without the profound mystical spirituality on which it should be based, it would never achieve what it achieved in the early Church. 

If we have been, and still are, blind to the devastating deterioration in deep personal prayer after Quietism, that always leads to the sin against the Holy Spirit. That is why Christ sent His mother to call His people to radically return to repentance, sacrifice, and prayer—to open themselves once more to the loving action of the Holy Spirit. 

The year 1960 was the last chance to listen to the simple supernatural sense that could alone radically open us all to receive the love that could save us. The leader of the Church on earth turned a deaf ear to the will of the leader of the Church in heaven and called a council instead. All councils depend on the Holy Spirit for help, strength, and inspiration, but He can only give it to those who are open to receive Him. This dilemma was not of God’s making but of man’s making. 

When I was a young man I knew that Christ was the Head of the Church and the Pope was His Vicar on earth but I never thought the time would come when I had to choose between them, but sadly that time has come.