THE MISSED DEBATE

Msgr. Brunero Gherardini

THE MISSED DEBATE

In March 2009 appeared the very instructive and ﬁne work by the theologian Msgr. Brunero Gherardini, The Ecumenical Vatican Council II: A Much Needed Discussion, published by Casa Mariana Editrice. The book met with success: there was an immediate second printing and within a few months, a second edition; then came translation into French, followed by translation into English and German, then Spanish and Portuguese. Presented with this success, a few critical voices were raised which, instead of stimulating a healthy debate, unjustly and presumptuously criticized the theologian’s excellent work. The book had constituted a veritable stone tossed into the pond of discussions about the pastoral assembly that created so many problems before and after its occurrence, within and without the Church. The purpose of the essay was to stir the stagnant waters in which the manifest crisis of the Church has been bogged.

“It was an appeal not only to those who decide the orientations of the Catholic Church, but also to the opinion-makers who, for various reasons, sometimes debatable, set the direction of the cultural world.”

It was a matter, then, of initiating a wise critical discussion of a question that has remained without response for almost 50 years. Msgr. Gherardini’s desire was to put an end to the sterile and continual celebration of the Council, with its quasi obsessive connecting of every theme, whether sacred or profane, to the purportedly pastoral Council; and to have the Council’s 16 documents (4 Constitutions, 9 Decrees, and 3 Declarations) subjected at last to free and constructive analysis. Exactly two years

(March 2011) after this book, a new, quite enlightening book has been published by this great theologian of the holy Roman Church in which the author expresses his sorrow and disappointment at the lack of attention to his appeal.

The Two Powerhouses of Interpretation

There are two centers guiding the Council’s interpretation, one official, constant, and univocal in the reiteration of its basic orientation. [It] has emphasized the grandiose character of the event, its exceptional importance; its providential, opportune response to the expectations of the contemporary world, the Church placed at the service of man— albeit, obviously, of redeemed man—and even of his cult; its opening to dialogue with the dominant culture, as if this constituted the quintessence of the Church’s mission; its adoption of a protagonist’s role in ecumenical dialogue, as if this were the panacea for divided Christianity, and as if the Lord had asked us to dialogue and not to preach and to convert. (p. 10)

The other center, lacking an ofﬁcial ecclesiastical character but followed by large numbers of churchmen and acting as the standard- bearer of the progressive wing of Catholic culture, is the School of Bologna, founded by Professor Giuseppe Alberigo. It has certainly been the most effective school of study, analysis, and elaboration of the Council, providing a key to its interpretation in clean break with

Tradition. According to this School, from the Council emerged a new Church, free from the “bonds” of the past. Tradition was pulverized, and from the Bologna School came forth, in both Europe and America, the masters of innovation.

They began to ridicule not only the pre-conciliar rites and devotions, but also doctrinal content and teaching, starting with St. Thomas and his methodology:

The Magisterium—of which the business of the Encyclical Dignitatis Humanae is the most disturbing conﬁrmation—was openly criticized, and, especially when it adopted the tone and the style of the past, the critics had the effrontery to deny it. In the simplistic and banal opposition between progressive and conservative- traditionalist was consummated the abolition of twenty centuries of history and evangelical witness, to make way for the novelty of the Conciliar Church. (p. 13)

The Break with Tradition

This revolutionary context greatly facilitated the penetration of the gospel message and ecclesiastical Tradition by rationalist, Enlightenment, positivist, existentialist and destructive tendencies. Then came the devastating effects of liturgical creativity, against which the Episcopal Conferences, “even if they had not been responsible themselves for the disorder created” (p. 14), did not know how to react. In short, it almost seemed as if 1965, the year the Council closed, was year zero in the Church, and little mattered the disorientation of conscience endured by the simple faithful: euphoria dominated, as well as the irresistible fascination aroused by the new, by the modern, by the ideal of a Church in step with the times, more attentive to man than to God, more attentive to the poor than to the sacraments and prayer,

more attentive to peace in the world than to the evangelization of peoples and nations, more attentive to progress than to the immemorial teachings she had always propounded with vigor, determination, and conviction. In this paradoxical scenario, in which churchmen and theologians fought against the Church out of their desire for emancipation and revolt, with the terrestrial, non-supernatural objective of getting closer to the world in order to be understood by it and to feel legitimated and accepted, thanks to aggiornamento, in every cultural, political, and social milieu. Ultimately, we witnessed a euphoric rebellion against age-old rules, of which the Roman Curia was the privileged target.

Msgr. Gherardini maintains that the break with Tradition occurred during the Second Vatican Council from quite early on. One need only think of the rejection of the preparatory schemata—not a single one of them was saved. “I remember,” the author reveals,

the unquestioned ﬁdelity to Tradition that characterized the schemata, without detracting from their balance between revealed content already deﬁned by the Church, between exposition according to classical methodology and attention to the new problems of the moment. Some of them compelled recognition not only by their ﬁdelity and doctrinal clarity, but also by the excellence of the exposition. The Church of all time shone in them. With these documents, the Church of all time could confront the cultural manifestations of the new Enlightenment. Once the Council began, this opposition came into the open. The new Enlightenment brought off an arrogant victory; this was understood immediately. The fate of the schemata was ﬁ xed the very moment they were put into the Council Fathers’ hands. (pp. 30-31)

Debate during the Council was also ﬁerce and disrespectful.

One example will sufﬁce: the episode in which the venerable Cardinal Ottaviani, in the midst of delivering an impassioned defense of the traditional Mass, was

silenced at the end of the allotted ﬁfteen-minute time for his speech when the microphone was turned off. At that moment, the Council was already progressing along a particular path, in declared rupture with the age-old Magisterium, summarized and updated in the contested schemata.... It was the beginning of an upheaval that, with time, was to become starker: theology became anthropology; man was elevated, as they said, in the divine design, to the rank of the ﬁrst and ultimate value of all of creation; salvation progressively lost touch with the revelation of original sin, with the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and Redemption, and with Christian hope of eternal life. (pp. 3 1-32)

Thanks to its method of referencing preceding Councils, Vatican II strewed different citations in its documents, especially where the greatest innovations were introduced “in order to assure a link between yesterday’s knowledge and today’s, which in fact did not exist. These were sentences crafted to allay apprehension and uneasiness” (p. 33). Thanks to these lucid explanations, the author reaches the convincing conclusion that the spirit of the Council did not show up after the Council, but while it was ongoing. The spirit of the Council was denounced by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and today Benedict XVI, defender of the hermeneutic of continuity with the past, as “a sort of uninterrupted self-reform” (p. 25), and in this spirit, the Cardinal noticed the elements of a “gegen-Geist,” or counter-spirit.

Against the Prophets of Gloom

The Spirit of the Council, by the way, was already perceptible in the words pronounced by John XXIII in the Council’s opening discourse, in which he called for expressing unchanging Catholic doctrine with new forms. Gherardini asserts: “Yes, with his manner of affecting simplicity and playing the perpetual optimist, Pope Roncalli did not realize, because, among other reasons, he acted without preliminary contact with the world-wide episcopate, how untimely and inopportune a Council was in this particular juncture” (p. 27). The “enigmatic” Pope Roncalli, as Gherardini designates him, was very hard on the “prophets of gloom” who offended the Pope with their foreboding:

In the daily exercise of our pastoral ofﬁce, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons who, though burning with zeal, are not endowed with too much sense of discretion or measure. In these modern times they can see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse, and they behave as though they hadlearned nothing from history, which is, none the less, the teacher of life. They behave as though at the time of former Councils everything was a full triumph for the Christian idea and life and for proper religious liberty. We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand..

The author observes, after an in-depth examination, that the “counterspirit” left its characteristic traces in the conciliar documents and is easily recognizable in some of them: Dei Verbum, Nostra Aetate, Lumen Gentium, Unitatis Redintegratio, and Dignitatis Humanae.

In his 2009 book, Msgr. Gherardini wished for sound, wholesome debates, studies, books, articles, in-depth critical studies... When, for example, he had in hand Ralph Mclnerny’s book with the promising

title What Went Wrong with Vatican II?he had hope to ﬁnd a serious study; instead, it was “an absolute disappointment.” Concerning Vatican II, Mclnerny repeated the common “vulgate” (p. 58), focusing his criticism on the post-conciliar period (p. 59).

A Providential Whisper

Msgr. Gherardini’s wish to be able to discuss Vatican II, not for the sake of vain polemics, but for the sake of constructive discussion and clariﬁcation. was answered by the Society of St. Pius X, which “understood and responded.. .and I say, “Thank you!” (p. 62).

In the same vein, I would like to relate a very arresting statement made by a diocesan priest, as courageous as he is persecuted by his hierarchy, who told me recently: “Whoever wants to be in Tradition without Msgr. Lefebvre is wasting his time.” Well, in the world of Tradition, the only ones to have heeded Msgr. Gherardini’s appeal were the sons of Msgr. Lefebvre, who not only paid attention to the “much needed discussion,” but opened a debate with a long series of interventions and a congress, organized by the Courrier de Rome, which was held in Paris from January 8-10, 2010, the Acts of which have been published.

Be that as it may, positive signs are cropping up everywhere, not boldly, but more like a whisper being spread: many priests, even if only secretly, reading, getting informed, studying... For ample, there are priests who, without identifying themselves as such openly, call in to Radio Maria, congratulating and sustaining the cultural and religious movement that has been initiated thanks among others, the

important books written by Msgr. Brunero Gherardini.

Draining the Swamp

The author then delivers a detailed and quite interesting analysis of certain movements such as the“neo-Pentecostalists” subsequently called “renewal in the Spirit” and the “neo-catechumenals,” which Gherardini deﬁnes as veritable “parallel churches.” A bishop to whom the theologian expressed his reservations about these realities smacking of heresy answered him: “But they pray a lot, so let them be. Apparently for the post-conciliar bishops, a prayer….is worth a heresy!”

Equally interesting, but very painful, is what the author relates following up on the aberration of pedophilia. Msgr. Gherardini reports the ofﬁcial number of married priests: more than 100,000, that is a quarter of the 408,000 priests incardinated in the dioceses; but their number is signiﬁ cantly less than the number of priests living more uxorio with a woman. And among these priests, as among religious, less numerous, “the atmosphere is Dolluted, and almost nobody notices”or else they pretend not to notice.

On June 11, 2010, during the closing of the Year of the Priest, Benedict XVI said:

The Church too must use the shepherd’s rod, the rod with which he protects the faith against those who falsify it, against currents which lead the ﬂ ock astray. The use of the rod can actually be a service of love. Today we can see that it has nothing to do with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life is tolerated. Nor does it have to do with love if heresy is allowed to spread and the faith twisted and chipped away, as if it were something that we ourselves had invented, as if it were no longer God’s gift, the precious pearl which we cannot let be taken from us. Even so, the rod must always become once again the shepherd’s staff—a staff which helps men and women to tread difﬁcult paths and to follow the Lord.

Gherardini characterizes the conduct unbecoming the sacerdotal life as “rubbish,” engendered and developed during the post: conciliar period because this “counterspirit” went against the spirituality that had guided the Church from its beginning until 1962; against its dogmas, reinterpreted not in accordance with theology, but according to the historical method; against its tradition, effaced as a

source of Revelation and reinterpreted in light of ordinary experience.

Msgr. Gherardini reaches the following conclusions: The 16 documents of Vatican II, an authentic ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, all express a conciliar magisterium not necessarily covered by the charism of infallibility. The Church’s magisterium is involved precisely because the documents are issued by a solemn and supreme ecumenical council. However, the quality of its documents must be

distinguished “because the solemn character of their teaching does not confer on them the same degree of importance, and does not entail per se their dogmatic, and hence infallible, validity” (p. 82).

Moreover, the serious specialist, according to the distinguished representative of the glorious Roman School, must consider that the Council ought to be studied on four different levels:

“(1) on the generic level of ecumenical council qua ecumenical council;

(2) on the speciﬁ c level of its pastoral character;

(3) on the level of its reference to other councils;

(4) on the level of its inovations.”

The last level separated the Church of Tradition from the Church of “the new Pentecost.” The dramas indeed were instigated by the innovators and the liberalizing currents imbued with modernism.It was these currents that led to the free fall towards rotten, corrupt morals.

The “much needed discussion” that Msgr. Gherardini has promoted about the laxist, relativist overtures of the Council and the post-conciliar Church continues to develop, inasmuch as “the truth will make you free” (Jn. 8:32)—and not dissimulation or, worse, mendacity, with the danger of worsening an already precarious situation. Sooner or later it will be necessary to shine a light in such a way that the stagnant pond into which the stone tossed by this theologian of the holy Roman Church dries up and is replaced by crystalline waters in which Heaven can be reﬂected.

Cristina Siccardi

Translated from Courrier de Rome, April 2011, pp. 2-4.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Renel B. Peña on November 23, 2011 at 5:54am

“Whoever wants to be in Tradition without Msgr. Lefebvre is wasting his time.”

Indeed!!!

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Permalink Reply by Dawn Marie on November 23, 2011 at 7:37am

Quote:

On June 11, 2010, during the closing of the Year of the Priest, Benedict XVI said:

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No disrespect intended but the Holy Father talks a good talk yet the talk without the walk is kind of pointless. If he beleives the use of the rod to correct is a good thing, and of course it is necessary at times, than why does he leave people like Schonborne and so many others to go unchecked when they continue constantly to defy and to remain in open heresy?