While I’ve never been able to remember the details of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), I’ve riffed on those monikers to denominate a major struggle over the meaning of the Second Vatican Council: the “War of the Conciliar Succession.”
As I explained in my book, The Irony of Modern Catholic History, the War of the Conciliar Succession was not a brawl between stereotypical Catholic “traditionalists” and Catholic “liberals.” Rather, it was a battle within the ranks of the reformist theologians at Vatican II, which erupted while the Council was still underway. And it eventually split the reformist camp into hostile parties whose contrasting positions were honed and debated in two journals, Concilium and Communio.
Concilium was launched during the Council by some of the most influential thinkers advising the bishops. Communio began publishing in 1972; its founders included theologians who had played large roles in shaping the Council’s major documents, but who believed that their erstwhile colleagues in Concilium misunderstood both Pope John XXIII’s intention for Vatican II and the Council’s actual teaching. At the center of the Communio project was a Bavarian theologian named Joseph Ratzinger.
Ratzinger would eventually see the Communio interpretation of Vatican II — a council of reform within tradition that developed Catholic tradition — vindicated by the Synod of Bishops in 1985 and by the magisterium of Pope John Paul II, which Ratzinger later amplified in his own papal teaching. Thus, as Pope Benedict XVI, he forthrightly addressed the contentions within the Concilium/Communio split in his 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, in which he sharply criticized those who “read” the Council as a rupture with the Catholic past — what some today call a “paradigm shift.”
Profound issues ignited the War of the Conciliar Succession, and those issues remain urgent ones for the Church today.
Is divine revelation real and binding over time, or does contemporary experience authorize the Church to change or modify what God has declared to be true in Scripture and tradition (about, for example, the permanence of sacramental marriage, or the proper expression of human love, or the priesthood of the New Covenant and those who may be ordained to it)? Is the Catholic Church a loose confederation of local Churches who may legitimately follow their own doctrinal and moral paths? Or is the Church truly “catholic,” meaning that local expressions of Catholicism must always confess “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5) with the universal Church? Is Jesus Christ the unique savior and redeemer, such that all who are saved are saved through Christ, even if they do not know him? Or is Jesus one among many expressions of a generic divine will-to-save that manifests itself through various spiritual masters over time? Is the Church’s basic task the sanctification of the world or a dialogue with the world?
Although it began as a dispute among Catholic intellectuals, the War of the Conciliar Succession has played itself out in the trenches of Catholic life for the past 60 years. And although two empirical realities seem clear — the living parts of the world Church have embraced Vatican II as authoritatively interpreted by John Paul II and Benedict XVI and have followed Communio’s understanding of the Council’s call to Christocentric evangelization, while the dying parts of the world Church cling stubbornly to the Concilium model of Catholic Lite — some, even in high authority, are now trying to redefine the War of the Conciliar Succession with an eye to the next papal conclave.
Their strategy is to frame that event as posing a stark choice between the acceptance or rejection of Vatican II. That is not true. The real issue is the proper interpretation of the Council, which did not intend to reinvent Catholicism as another species of liberal Protestantism, unsure of its tether to divine revelation and blown hither and yon by the spirit of the age. It is also false, egregiously false, to suggest that Council rejectionism is a major force in the 21st-century Church, especially in the Church in the United States.
Council rejectionism is a fringe phenomenon, increasingly cranky and shrill. The advocates of Catholic Lite, having lost the War of the Conciliar Succession theologically and needing a bogeyman to attack, now find it tactically useful to wildly exaggerate the number of conciliar rejectionists and their impact in the Church.
Those with responsibility for the Catholic future will not be deceived by nonsense about rampant, widespread Vatican II rejectionism, irrespective of the source of that nonsense.
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I think Weigel is correct when he says that “The advocates of Catholic Lite… now find it tactically useful to wildly exaggerate the number of conciliar rejectionists and their impact in the Church.” I think if someone took a randomized poll of orthodox practicing Catholics and asked if they accepted the teachings of Vatican Council II, these Catholics wouldn’t have any idea what the question even refers to. More than likely they’d be familiar with the term “Vatican Council II” or the “Second Vatican Council” but wouldn’t be able to tell you one blessed thing about its teachings. Suggestion: start by asking Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden to tell us some of the teachings of Vat II; after all, according to some in our hierarchy, they are models of what a good Catholic thinks and how they should act.
So what is the end goal of Pope Francis’s governance? What can we expect from the successor to Pope Francis? Is the Roman Catholic Church leading her parishioners to heaven of hell? Where do we in the pews go from here?
Take a look around you. What do you see? What do you hear? What does your common sense tell you? There is your answer, unless you choose to be wilfully blind, deaf, and dumb.
The essay seems to fail the test of reality.
The essay says that there are “profound” and “urgent” issues at stake, but it then trivializes the whole matter by labeling what it opposes as merely “Catholic Lite.” That label fails to identify the evil and anti-Christ ideology that has emerged full force inside the uppermost ranks of the current Church power elite, led by the Pontiff Francis.
The essay also misreads, underestimates and thus operates to misguide a faithful Catholic about the situation on the battlefield, falling into a self-deceiving or sleepwalking triumphalism by asserting that what are in fact malignant forces have already been defeated and they just don’t know it, because the writer says they “already lost the war of consiliar succession.”
The forces arrayed against the faithful teaching of JP2 and B16 and all the ranks of faithful they represent (both now and those who have gone before us), are not to be trivialized as “Catholic Lite,” they are evil, they are forces of darkness.
And the war is a war between good and evil, not a transitory battle about dualing interpretations of one transitory council in the 1960s. What went on in the pontificates of JP2 and B16 were just battles in a long war. The Pontiff Francis and his protagonists know this, and they survived the last 2 battles, spread their malignant ideology horizontally throughout the Church, and in 2013 they siezed and are now holding the high ground in this battle and are fighting to win the war and impose what is evil.
The essay is overconfident, it underestimates what’s at stake, and misreads the situation on the battlefield.
I read this article in concert with the companion article “So what is the end goal of Pope Francis’s governance?” in today’s email. To be certain I struggled reading both, so I greatly appreciate your commentary.
I think your analysis is outstanding and forcefully stated. My only difference would be that your estimate of the article as “overconfident” is vastly over- generous.
The Communio reformists can be compared to today’s “anti-woke” reactionary intellectuals who detest and try to “cancel” “wokeness.” As the opposition to “woke” they are actually more of “asleep.” Whereas Vatican II in Lumen Gentium clearly thought and taught of the Church as the “People of God,” the Communio group maneuvered to have this canceled and/or changed into “Communion.” Being then the power holders, especially Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Communion wing in the 1985 Synod and consequent teachings in the years that followed were able to successfully stir the Church to an ecclesiology of communion as the lens to interpret Vatican II. At that time with this development, most theologians and writers who did not detect this underhanded maneuver – including this article’s author, promoted and spread this paradigm shift which led – or more of misled – the general Catholic body to adjust their bearings and accept this development in understanding the Church. Pope Francis corrected this anomaly perpetrated by the Communio theologians and has brought back the “People of God” ecclesiology into the forefront as the proper conciliar lens to understand the nature and mission of the Church which is more biblical and traditional.
Dom:
It’s a candid moment to propose something so impoverished as a Church without communion. The Anglican Church may bristle at the competition though.
It reminds me of what one key note speaker declared at a LCRW conference 20-30 years ago: “We have moved beyond Christ.”
Your proposal is a loose confederation of pseudo-religious non-confessing fiefdoms run by careerist office-seekers pandering to the mob inside their jurisdiction.
What would that look like, people worshipping wooden idols like Pachamama and running conferences promoting sodomy?
The “confederation” you propose is a self-licking ice cream cone, and has no need of an incarnation, a saving death on Good Friday, a Resurrection from the Dead, nor a Pentecost.
It just needs to be self-satisfied. And all it has to do is walk down the street and take over the property of the defunct Episcopal parishes.
The word useless seems apt.
Chris: Nowhere did I mention, imply, or propose “confederation.” That’s entirely your understanding, imagination, and thought. Read Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, chapter 2, “On the People of God.”
Dom:
Good morning.
Like others of a certain age, I have read (and reread) LG, and I am aware of the interpretations freighted in the term People of God.
And in connection with that, I have read about why Joseph Ratzinger and others of the Resourcement movement rejected Consilium and started Communio.
And those who are likewise informed recognize that the “Consilium” movement is moving away from Jesus, and is offering a non-confessional blob, which I called a confederation (or in the words “trending now,” the “polyhedron”).
Hence in the photo, the Concilium ideology openly declares its trajectory away from Jesus, in the title about “Wueer Theologies,” proving the candid assessment of Ratzinger et al, who as Communio et al state, remained centered on Resourcement, while watching the men like Kung etc steer away from Jesus and hit the gas.
Hence now some people, led by the Pontiff Francis, declaring themselves to speak as representatives of “the people of god” have a “synod” on queering the church, which will be “related” to us by an apostate man named Hollerich (called an eminence), who declares for the Pontiff Francis that the apostolic teaching that sodomy is is sin is “wrong,” because it is “not scientific.”
It is unbecoming of adults to be coy, since the apostasy is now all out there, and fancy titles and clerical costumes cannot conceal the nakedness of “the new pagan ethos” (to borrow the phrase from the pagan Robert Kagan, who employs it for political purposes, but it fits quite nicely for Eminence Hollerich etc etc etc).
And as to the avowed “scientific” claims now being asserted by the ecclesial apostates named above, I have a friend who responds in contemplation of his own scientific experience of the GB portion of the LBGT life-style, and has escaped the lifestyle, and what he has vividly described as its utter and explicit spiritual darkness, while suffering the ravages of the STDs he contracted under the path now being promoted by the Pontiff Francis and Eminence Hollerich et al, and he makes this scientific statement: “It is insanity for adults to teach [people] that it is OK for a man to inseminate another man’s intestines.”
It’s also very unbecoming of His Eminence Hollerich and Pontiff Francis to be suggesting that we set aside the commands of Jesus and the revelation of St. Paul his apostle.
Many people applaud Eminence H and Pontiff Francis for being “prophetic” about “an accommodation” regarding the Sixth Commandment, and they say they speak as “the people of god.”
It’s not following Jesus, which is the big problem.
In the Abbot edition of “The Documents of Vatican II,” Chapter 2 includes fn. 27 which reads:
“Completing the study of the biblical images and designation in the second half of Chapter 1, the Constitution devotes an entire chapter [Chapter 2] to the description of the Church as the ‘new People of God.’ This title, solidly founded in Scripture [“biblical”!], met a profound desire of the Council to put greater emphasis on the human and communal side of the Church, rather than on the institutional and hierarchical aspects which have sometimes been overstressed in the past for polemical reasons. While everything said about the People of God as a whole is applicable to the laity, it should not be forgotten that the term ‘People of God’ refers to the total community of the Church, indicating the pastors as well as the other faithful.”
So, how did the Council define “Church”? Broadly, or clearly? Seems clear enough…with the concluding [“underhanded?”] reference in Lumen Gentium, itself, to “building up the Body in the Eucharistic Sacrifice” (n. 17).
And, now, possibly violating this clear self-understanding, today under synodality why are bishops (ordained pastors in apostolic succession) typecast primarily as “facilitators” in more of a block-party process that invites those outside the Church apparently as full participants?
Not a “confederation,” but goulash?
And the results have been utterly catastrophic.
Pope Francis did no such thing. Pope Francis supports the distortions keenly noted by Weigel. As usual, “progressives” (secular Catholics) push false dichotomies–very much contrary to the great Catholic both/and approach to the complexities of reality. Biblically, the Church is BOTH the People of God AND the Mystical Body of Christ. The Eucharist is BOTH a sacred communal banquet AND an eternal holy sacrifice. Veritas in caritate; caritas in veritatem! “Only that which is true can ultimately be pastoral” (Pope Benedict XVI), not that silly idea Episcopagan idea that the pastoral must trump the doctrinal if we are to be true to the Gospel. Bergoglioism will be condemned a heresy at Vatican III.
So there is no danger and never has been any danger that “the people of God” would continue their lives of human sinfulness? That majorities of them would cease to believe in the Real Presence, would cease going to confession, would identify themselves as Catholic in surveys yet favor contraception, gay marriage, and the condemning of babies to the meat grinder of abortion? That there is no need for the Church to remain vigilant about human sinfulness and the inevitable crimes against humanity that even self-proclaiming Catholic Christians gravitate towards when they are no longer reminded of the fact, frequently, institutionally, that they are sinners?
There is nothing really wrong with the article, other than it reads like part of an academic discussion in a graduate theology class. The typical practicing catholic wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between Concilium and Coummunio if their life depended on it.
I think of the Church in the 4th century. A majority of bishops were Arian, but as John Cardinal Newman pointed out, it was the laity that kept the faith. And, they did this in believing that Jesus was God and equal to the Father, without a great deal of Trinitarian theology.
A local parish bulletin lists 1800 families as parishoners, and typically 300 contribution envelopes used at weekend masses. That is where we are in Christocentric evangelization today.
“The real issue is the proper interpretation of the Council, which did not intend to reinvent Catholicism as another species of liberal Protestantism, unsure of its tether to divine revelation and blown hither and yon by the spirit of the age.”
A simple question for Mr. Weige: How is it possible to claim that there has not been “proper interpretation” of the Council when for the past 60 years it has been implemented in every jot and tittle by no fewer than 6 post-Conciliar popes of whom three, and perhaps soon four, have been canonized as saints?
The canard of “proper interpretation” is so shopworn and threadbare that to see it flung out still again at this late date exceeds the bounds of disingenuousness and verges into the territory of dim-wittedness.
Is divine revelation real and binding over time, the entree to the 6th paragraph
unfolds the true faith like a gold threaded humeral veil.
Analogy, a war of succession is a good one, because the analogy closely compares the real spiritual battle of two implacable armies of true believers dedicated to Christ and the nouveau protestant rejectionists. Weigel’s apt description mentions three pontiffs exclusively, John XXIII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI. These led the believers for some decades, now the missing chesspiece likened to the power of a Queen on a chessboard is the present pope, Francis.
As a careful diplomat Weigel’s quiet omission tells the story as loudly as would the mention of the dilemma of the Church. Although the faithful have Christ.
The forces described by Cardinal O’Brien here, 2012, are active within the members of the Church too. But I would say at the same time, that this is not new for her!
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2012/11/27/cardinal-edwin-obrien-on-the-threat-to-religious-liberty-in-the-u-s/
60% of the Roman Catholic world speaks Spanish of which 40% are from Latin America where Pope Francis is from. The needs of the small minority from the English-Speaking Catholic should not dominate the needs of the entire world church. The English-Speaking Catholics have been exposed to Protestant reforms (sins) in ways that the Spanish Catholics have not. Although the English-speaking Catholics in North America are wealthier, let’s not go back to the practice of selling indulgences where wealth can buy the practices of sinful behavior. That is the real issue, how many sins can wealth buy?
Remember what Jesus said, “it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Another great and short article by George Weigel! Thank you Mr. Weigel! Your articles are always insightful and useful! And at the same time concise! Sometimes even more than the comments afterward!
Whatever remaining respect I formerly had for George Weigel has evaporated. Such a fine mind consumed by so much arrogance. It was bad enough when Weigel indirectly supported the abortion holocaust, in spite of his many commendable pro-life essays, by campaigning passionately against Donald Trump, but his dismissive attitudes towards what he continuously trivializes as fringe elements within the Church for having serious misgivings about the content and the repercussions of VII is too much to bear. Until his last three, I read all his books, and now I don’t know what content actually represents truthful Church history or what was distorted by his pompous need to maintain good favor with his Church contacts.
Only a fringe element upset about the evolutionary secular utopianism subtly lauded in the documents of Vatican II? There are a great many more than disgruntled “radtrads” who have been upset for 57 years, and Weigel has to know he is being dishonest. So many land mines in the documents, as Phil Lawler has called them, that have diminished Catholic witness and appreciation for the reality of original sin and the permanent imperfectability of the human condition that has made it easier in the past 57 years for ecclesial and subsequent social moral entropy to have occurred.