Yet more of the fiery sermon and the bishop who excommunicated its preacher.

A tale of our time, Part 3

The preacher has opened the Vatican 2 issue. He announces he cannot “avoid the conclusion that

this “spirit” of the Council, with its opening to the so-called “modern world” in ambiguous texts unlike any that any previous Council had ever adopted, has caused a rupture in the Church.

He backs this up with Pope Emeritus Benedict’s assessment:

Recognizing the problem with the Council’s apparent departure from Catholic tradition, [Benedict] made a valiant effort to propose what he called a Hermeneutic of Continuity or Reform. THAT IS, a way of interpreting the teachings of the Second Vatican Council so that they can be embraced together with the infallible teachings of the councils and Popes which came before.

“The Council’s apparent departure from Catholic tradition.” A rogue council?

The bishop in Houston is glued to his seat, listening to the replay of this sermon by one of his priests, administrator of a small congregation in a Minneapolis suburb, posted via link to word-for-word recording on a major traditionalist web site for thousands also to listen.

“The thoughtful Catholic” the preacher continues, “should ask himself: Why should it be necessary to try to reconcile the teaching of one Council with all other councils that came before it?”

That is to say, as Mehitabel said to Archie many decades ago, “Wotthehell? Wotthehell?”

Can’t do that reconciling, says the preacher.

I have come to the realization that this effort can no longer be made with integrity. And this conclusion ought not surprise . . . anyone [It caught the bishop napping!] . . . Pope John XXIII said at the opening of the Council and Pope Paul VI reminded everyone as the Council came to a close, that it was their express will to unleash a new Spirit into the Church . . . a spirit which each affirmed in his own way would be unlike the Spirit of Catholicism which had preceded it.

Revolutionary talk from Holy Fathers. Unwitting perhaps, failing to recognize a carte blanche of their own devising. Missing the spirit of the time. Going halfway in their direction?

No Pius X among them, he of the memorable fingering of theological “modernists” (his term for doctrine-meddlers) in an erudite 1907 encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, in which he rejected “profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called.”

But how many Pius X’s have there ever been?

The preacher delivers a biting description of papal derogation of duty as he sees it, arguing (floridly) that “the Conciliar Popes have – in a way – repeated Peter’s Three-Fold Denial of Jesus Christ!”

He begins with Paul VI, who in 1965 hailed the United Nations as a “lofty Institution . . . the obligatory path of modern civilization and world peace,” contrasting it with Pius XI’s 1922 encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio declaring “the Church alone [was able] to . . . develop in mankind the true spirit of brotherly love.”

Furthermore, Paul (“Peter,” in that he occupies Peter’s chair) wouldn’t discipline “wayward Bishops, theologians and seminary professors . . . [but] PROMOTED and advanced clerics who openly denied the perennial and immutable truths of the Faith . . .

Preacher has much more in this vein, spilling his guts, letting devil take the hindmost, pouring it on for his flock — and now unwittingly for his bishop in far-off Houston.

Who was not pleased.
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— more later on this much ado about a widely publicized passionate sermon, including a near-immediate flight to Houston for a command appearance before a grim, accusatory ecclesiastical trio . . .