An article published in the prestigious American newspaper New York Times explains why the Second Vatican Council, whose 60th anniversary is celebrated and serves as a constant reference before the imminent synod, has been, objectively, a failure.
The New York Times, a mirror in which all the press in the world looks at itself, is not exactly Catholic. So, what interest can it have for the faithful to ‘cancel’ the last council of our Church? Two reasons come to mind.
The first is that the NYT is the benchmark for Western progressivism, that is, it has all the conditions to support the modernist trend adopted by the Church after the last council, the same trend that has been accelerating in recent years. This means that his verdict is not exactly dictated by dark reactionary interests, but by the evidence.
And the second is that, to a certain extent, the newspaper is the closest thing there is to a faithful interpreter of the most advanced modern secular thought. If the express aim of the council was to bring the Church closer to the modern world, the modern world is what you read about in the pages of the Times.
The sentence appears in a column by the convert to Catholicism Ross Douthat, “How Catholics became prisoners of Vatican II”, where the provocative phrase with which we have titled this article is underlined: “The Council was a failure”. And he explains it.
“This is not meant to be a gimmicky or reactionary analysis. The Second Vatican Council failed on the terms established by its own supporters. It was meant to make the Church more dynamic, more attractive to modern people, more evangelizing, less closed, obsolete, and self-referential. He didn’t get any of these things. The church went into decline throughout the developed world after Vatican II, under both conservative and liberal popes, but the decline was fastest where the council’s influence was greatest,” writes Douthat.
“The new liturgy should have involved the faithful more in the Mass; instead, the faithful began to spend Sunday mornings in bed and forego Lenten practices. The Church has lost a large part of Europe to secularism and a large part of Latin America to Pentecostalism: very different contexts and challenges, but surprisingly similar results.”
Nothing surprising here, nothing that has not been said (even in whispers), if only because it is more than obvious for those who do not want to close their eyes to the stubborn reality. Remember what they say Saint Pius X said: if you open wide the doors of the Church, those who are inside will come out and those who are outside will not enter. That is what we see now in this same pontificate.
The numbers are overwhelming, we have mentioned them on several previous occasions and we are not going to repeat them, but they would convince any stranger who looked at the situation with equanimity. If it were, say, a company or the mandate of a political party, it would go down in the annals as a notorious failure, whatever ideas one may have.
“There is no intelligent rationalization, no intellectual scheme, no sententious Vatican propaganda – a typical recent document refers to the “life-giving sustenance provided by the Council”, as if it were the Eucharist itself – that can avoid this cold reality, “confirms the article.
There is nothing to do anymore, concludes the columnist, and you have to put up with the council. It is beyond us what the future will bring to this council, and it does not cross our imaginations to suggest what might be the best way forward in this regard. Yes, we would dare to insinuate that insisting relentlessly at all hours on something that has given such a questionable result may not be the most convenient.