You offer the TLM but do you accept Vatican II? My clever answer…

We’re quite rambunctious in the parish here, offering the TLM at the main parish Mass every Sunday at 11:00 AM. We thought we might advertise a bit, you know, for the sake of evangelization. Many have waited for decades for the return. So, one of the distinguished members of the parish who is a good friend with the local radio station asked if this bit of religious news be broadcast:

That will be run many times a day for the entire week, for free, as it’s for religious purposes. Great!

But that, of course, will set some ecclesiastics to wondering as to whether I accept the Second Vatican Council.

Submitting to 100% of every Constitution, Decree and Declaration, every word, every syllable, every letter, has been tied in these recent tumultuous decades to the litmus test as to whether one is Catholic, you know, should one dare to appreciate the glories of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass of the Ages, the Traditional Latin Mass, as if assisting at Holy Mass as the Lord’s Little Flock has done throughout the centuries and millennia is somehow bad and evil and automatically calls into question one’s very membership in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Such brow-beating got me to thinking. What was the situation of the “Fathers” of the Vatican Council II? Did they each have to take an oath to God that they accept everything in each document lest they burned alive at the stake? No, no they didn’t. That’s not how it works. They were free to vote for against the schema. Fully 60% rejected the schemata before even starting, not the 2/3 needed, but they were discarded anyway. Later, they could disagree on points of drafts as they would be presented for review again and again and again, sometimes yes for a paragraph, sometimes no for a paragraph, being invited also to make spoken interventions. Let’s review those documents:

Constitutions

• Dei Verbum
• Lumen Gentium
• Sacrosanctum Concilium
• Gaudium et Spes

Declarations

• Gravissimum Educationis
• Nostra Aetate
• Dignitatis Humanae

Decrees

• Ad Gentes
• Presbyterorum Ordinis
• Apostolicam Actuositatem
• Optatam Totius
• Perfectae Caritatis
• Christus Dominus
• Unitatis Redintegratio
• Orientalium Ecclesiarum
• Inter Mirifica

To the point: not every one of the Council “Fathers” signed every one of those documents. They didn’t have to. They were free to have their opinions and disagreements for whatever cause. That’s the reason for a Council. + Marcel Lefebvre voted against, say, Dignitatis humanae, but then signed it. See the last entry on the bottom right, and then the continuation on the top left of the next page:

Yes, his full name is + Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre.

This freedom to speak even with parrhesia, as it is said, is rather more human than what is happening today. Now, those pious souls who love assisting at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered as it traditionally has been offered throughout the ages must assent to every syllable of every word of every sentence of every paragraph of every article of every document, you know, while gasoline is being poured over them and a lit match is held toward them. “Accept everything all at once, or else!”

Should someone ask me as to whether I accept all the documents with all of their content in such an impolite and discourteous manner, I would answer that we would have to sit down for a few centuries and dialogue about every sentence and part of sentences and groups of sentences, etc. Each word would need Lewis and Short. Each literary context would have to be drawn out. Historical philology would begin to be taught everywhere. This is not being difficult. It is simply that I have no idea what much of what is contained in the documents could possibly mean. There are some statements that are simple, true, pious. There are many scattered throughout that are clearly purposely ambiguous in such manner as to mislead Christ’s faithful.

Since I cannot decipher what those purposely ambiguous statements could possibly mean, and since no one has any authority to say what all those passages mean, in their dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, as if speaking infallibly for each of the “Fathers” (all of whom disagreed with each other) and for Pope Paul VI who himself had to intervene in ferocious disputes, and then proclaim somehow that all the Council “Fathers” were always and in all things of one mind and one judgement about all of these things or any of them at all, they having voted wildly differently on all these things, well then, we’re at a stalemate. I just don’t get it.

So, what is this whereby the faithful are smashed down and kicked in the face and told to accept that which no one can say what it means? This is all entirely absurd and an insult to Christ Jesus and to each member of His Little Flock.

Method is also doctrinal. And this method of kicking people in the face and spitting in the face of Jesus is not reasonable, not Catholic. It is anti-Catholic, anti-Christ. And it’s not in the “spirit” of Vatican II voting of the “Fathers”!

Diversely, put the dogmatic canons of Trent in front of me and I will instantly assent to all of them, no problem.

I mean, I can give examples of studied ambiguity in either the documents or the “spirit” of the Council, but – Hey! – I have to same something for the surely to be entertaining “dialogue” that would take place (though a waste of time).

I’ve been doing the analysis of texts for a long time at the highest levels of academia this world and this Church have to offer. It is to laugh. Of course, some of those ecclesiastics will not appreciate being presented with the truth. That’s not the point for them. It’s all about power cut off from truth, cut off from love, cut off from Christ Jesus, who, it should be said, will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire. Amen.