Pints With Aquinas - All Your Vatican 2 Questions Answered! w/ Dr. Richard DeClue

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

Dr. Richard DeClue joins the show to talk about The Second Vatican Council. The History, Documents Process, and Fallout. Support the Show: https://mattfradd.locals.com Clip Sponsors: https://hallow.com/matt https://strive21.com/matt Follow Dr. DeClue:   @decluesviews2740  https://institute.wordonfire.org/ https://decluesviews.locals.com/

Richard de Klooe, how are you? Good. How are you doing, man? I'm well. This is I've never done this before. This is the first time I've had a first cup of coffee in an interview. Do you mean? Yeah, I held off just for you. That's dangerous. Yeah. What? Yeah. Maybe that's why I feel so cruddy. Gradually get less grumpy as we go.

My wife and I were talking about this the other day. Like my wife will say, well, why do I need to have a drink with you? Like if I have a whiskey and I can't have a glass of wine or something, you know, and she's got a health issue, so she probably shouldn't. And I probably shouldn't be encouraging her. So what is it? What does it matter to you?

And I think coffee is similar. It's an experience we're sharing together. You know what I mean? Right. Like, let's have a coffee together. And if I'm having a coffee and you're having a water, I don't like that. Right. Gotcha. One of my many old man things. You know what I mean? Right? Like let's have a coffee together. If I'm having a coffee and you're having a water I don't like that, right? Got you. It's one of my many old man things. Well, I will say I'm impressed because I'm very picky about coffee Mmm, and this is actually really good. Yeah good. So

So de Clue, it's a sweet last name. Well done Yeah Yeah, I did a lot of work on that one So we're gonna be talking about the Vatican II today a lot. I'm really excited to learn from you about it. But for those who aren't familiar with you, would you just give a quick kind of bio? Okay, so I come from a rather devout Catholic family

on both sides. So both my parents were devout, both sets of their parents were devout. were developed, both sets of their parents were developed, and moved around a lot, you know, when I was a kid, but just, you know, really developed Catholic family, big family, extended family. Originally, so when I went to college, I originally studied pre-veterinary medicine and biology with a minor in chemistry and tutored math and chemistry for the university and all of that. And then ended up transferring to Belmont Abbey College,

mainly just because I ran out of money to go to the University of Findlay. Was Madrid there at the time? He was associated with it. I don't know if he ever lived there and taught. No, I think that was later, if I'm not mistaken. So what did you transfer to? So I transferred from University of Findlay

in Findlay, Ohio to Bellman Abbey College. But I mean, class-wise, did you change your major? I changed, well, not at first. At first, I just dropped the pre-vet part, and then I decided I wanted to go into biomedical research and development. And after one semester, so this would have been at the end of my sophomore year,

I changed my major to theology. Okay. So after that, I basically, I went to Boston College for a year of master's work and then decided to go through the ecclesiastical degrees track instead. So I did the STB, STL, and STHD in systematic theology at Catholic University. Did you have a craft for any class?

I did not, but I had been reading him since I was in middle school. So I believe the philosophy department, because that's what he was in is Like one floor below the theology department So he used to just walk down to his office and hope I'd run into him fangirl So I did so one day I walked down there and his door was open. He had like a stack of papers He was like stapling them or something and I was just like I'm sorry I don't want to bother you but I just you know, I'm a big fan. You know, it was super awkward about that. Yeah. No, he was really cool about it He's like, oh, yeah. Well, it's nice to meet you

You know, feel free to stop by anytime you want and you know, pick my brain and that was it And did you take him up on that? No, I would have been never You promise. Yeah, you know, that was the last time I had actually Run into him on campus. So why did you choose to do a theology degree? It was from vet. So you were hoping to be a veterinarian? Yeah.

And you don't do that now, right? Just for those at home? No. You're a theologian. Correct. So is it weird saying that, admitting that about yourself? A little bit because there is the sort of Eastern tradition of theologian is really More mystical like you have to so it's a little strange because now it's largely based on academic credentials and

But there's no really other thing to call it. Yeah, so I just go with it Yeah, I don't I had always been interested in philosophy and theology since I was a child like me and my dad would stay up late at night and just talk about things and So like I said, I was reading craved when I was in middle school that you know remarkable Yeah, yeah and loved it. So I just had never thought of it as a possible career path. Yeah, and then I just had never thought of it as a possible career path. Yeah. And then eventually I just realized one thing, I loved the sciences, I was always into the sciences

and it always confirmed my faith. So like the more I studied science, the more I was like, God's gotta be behind this. Nothing else makes sense. I almost felt like you had to choose to be an atheist, like in willfully reject the evidence is sort of how I saw it. That was your impression at the time?

Is that what you mean? Yeah, just sort of like, going back to what St. Bonaventure says about, those who don't see are blind, those who do not hear are dumb, or deaf. So I just sort of at one point realized, it was sort of in stages I wanted to go into veterinary medicine mainly because I loved science, especially biology and

chemistry and I wanted to help people but and I loved animals and It was more like the safe route because I was like I knew For myself that like if I had to like do an emergency surgery on a child, I probably couldn't emotionally handle it. Yeah. But if it's an animal, it's like, okay. I'll be fine. Yeah, I'll be fine.

I love animals, but they're not people. And then at some point, I just decided that I wanted to go into a more, instead of just learning a bunch of stuff and then applying it, I wanted to sort of do more abstract things. And so that's why I wanted to go into research and development.

I wanted to develop new ideas and new things. So what did you focus on when you studied theology? Well, I studied pretty much everything, but systematic theology is what I focused on. Okay. And then what did you do with that? What is your job right now? And does it have to do with theology specifically?

Yeah, professor of theology at the Word on Fire Institute. I really should do my background before I interview people. So you're like a vet, no? Yeah, I knew you were working for them, but I didn't know if things changed. No. So what is your role there in Intel? Well, basically we do online courses

and write articles and books. I speak at academic conferences. Yeah. It's awesome. So you get to spend most of your days studying, researching, writing. Basically, yeah. And that's just, you love doing that, huh?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's cool. But I jumped from science to theology because I realized that I was always asking the question why and everything I was saying in sciences was more of like how, yeah, or what. Yeah. And so it re I spent a lot of time in the adoration chapel actually trying to

figure that out because obviously the sciences are more pragmatic, like first getting a job. But so what I ended up doing was I just tried to imagine myself in prayer doing both jobs. Yeah. And I realized I could see myself doing both and being perfectly happy. But in doing that thought experiment, it was, I would miss doing theology more.

So I realized I was more interested in it. I was more passionate about it. So I was like, I'm just going to take a leap and go down that road. How did Word on Fire reach out to you? And then honestly, they saw some stuff I was doing. I was doing. I was actually selling cars at the time. I think this was my confusion.

That's why I said are you in this now? Because I've heard different things about it. Yeah, no, so I spent a lot of time, so my dissertation took a lot longer than I expected. And I spent a good bit of time waiting for the feedback to come back from the readers. Like, I was like, something like 18 months or something.

And so I was like, I need money. So while I'm waiting, I need to get a full-time job. And so I basically got a job at a luxury car dealership at Jaguar, Land Rover, Porsche, Volvo. Wow. And I saw all- What kind of people walk into those establishments? They're actually quite varied,

especially when you have all four of those brands. Yeah. Because there's some overlap in customers, but also somewhat different. And it was a small market. So I started out in Volvo, and then I also certified to sell Jaguar Land Rover. And then eventually they moved me over to Porsche.

So I was mostly selling Porsches by like the last year. So I was there. But again, tell me what kind of people walk into those establishments. Do they look rich? Do they? No, not necessarily. You can't, the first car I sold was to,

I still remember him, nice guy. I mean, you could have thought he was like poor. Like you really could have. I love hearing stories like that about these rock stars who make a ton of money. They go to an establishment like that, they get kind of rejected because they don't look terrific. And they go buy a Porsche and drive it past the place and honk. Yeah. And he bought this car and he was like, you know, like, well, you know,

here's some down payment options. And we had like five hundred thousand fifteen hundred. He's like, I think I'm going to put down like thirty five thousand. 100,000, 1500, he's like, I think I'm gonna put down like 35,000. Like it was no big deal. And then, you know, he's a really nice guy, but a very unassuming, you wouldn't know he was rich. I mean, people buying like porches and stuff, first of all, they usually make their own schedule in a way.

And if they're at the dealership, they're gonna be comfortable. They're not gonna show up in like tuxedos and suits. You know? Yeah, I've heard that rich people don't look like rich people because they have nothing to prove. Right. That's why I'm wearing a suit.

Yeah. Because I have a lot to prove. Yeah. And I have nothing to back it up. Okay, so you've got a high by word on fire. What was your dissertation on? Joseph Ratzinger's theology of divine revelation. Awesome.

It's always dangerous to ask somebody about their dissertation because you've thought about this topic more than any other human on the planet. It was hard because it wasn't my area of focus. I was more into ecclesiology before that. I first heard about you, I think, because you were pushing back against, correct me if I'm wrong, some things maybe that Marshall and Gordon perhaps were saying, was it Marshall in particular about Vatican II? Well, it was both. The first thing I did was on, they had sort of been bashing De Lubach.

Okay. And he's your boy. Well, he's not necessarily my boy, but I do like him a lot. But it was on nature and grace, but they were relying on an article on some website where the author admitted he wasn't a theologian and it showed.

And it was just frustrating because they were saying that Dilubach, oh, this is his understanding. I was like, that's not even close to what DeLubac says. And so I just did a video saying, guys, this isn't what it is. So I did actually did two videos on that. I did one sort of correcting the record and then I did a longer one doing a fuller explication

of DeLubac's thought. And then there was a video about Vatican II that it was like the errors of Vatican II. Okay. So me and my buddy Chris Plants did a like two hour and 15 minute response video to that. Yeah, I think that's right. Going point by point, going through. Yeah, and then to bring it, didn't you end up doing a chat with Tim live?

Yeah, he interviewed me. And he changed his mind on certain things? Well, yeah, he interviewed me and Chris on his channel that's when I was still at the Porsche dealership and he basically agreed with all of our points. So did he change his mind or was he just already in agreement? No he wasn't involved in that heirs of Vatican II video at all. Okay, that was just my- Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the more he studied it, the more he came around a little bit on that. But I don't know that I had anything to do with that, per se.

All right, well, I'm excited for you to teach me today, because I really think that there's a lot of confusion around Vatican II. People have a lot of opinions about it. They often conflate the implementation with the documents. They often almost always have not read the documents. So can we just sort of back up and ask what is an ecumenical council?

Yeah, I mean, essentially an ecumenical council is a gathering of the bishops from around the world under the headship of the Pope, whether he's physically present or not. You might send a legate, but either case he has to approve of it. So it's not an ecumenical council unless the Pope actually ratifies it.

But usually they're called to deal either with doctrinal issues or issues of practice and discipline or both. So it's basically an act of the college of bishops under the headship of the Pope to address concerns that are universally concerning to the church or pertain to the whole church. Of course, the first one was in 325, which might seem late,

but remember the Edict of Milan wasn't until 313. So gathering all the bishops of the world during persecution, probably not a smart idea. But that means we've had, since Vatican II was the 21st ecumenical council, that means we've averaged more than one a century. And early on, like if you look at Ephesus to Chalcedon, there was only 20 years between them, 431 and 451.

Yeah. So that's basically what an ecumenical council is. And so one of the questions you get asked is, well, why did we even have a council? This in regards to the The second Vatican council. Yeah, what was the point? Where did that come from? Yeah.

Right. And there's actually multiple converging factors. So first of all, there's a long time between Trent and Vatican I. Right, so you're talking a few hundred years. Well, Vatican I happens in 1869 to 1870. It prepared, there were like over 50 draft documents prepared for that council.

It only ended up completing two. And even one of those is only partial. And the reason was the Franco-Prussian War broke out. So they had to cut the council short. They weren't able to continue the work. There was talk of finishing it later on. So I believe it was in 1950. They had actually been doing preparations for a council

and Pope Pius XII ended up stopped, just didn't go through with that. Well, you have, he dies in 1958 and then Ron Cowley is elected as Pope John the 23rd. Well, a lot of people don't know this, but he, when he was a priest, he was actually a professor of church history. So church history was a big part of his work. And in particular, he was a priest of the Diocese of Bergamo, which is near Milan. And so he would go to the Ambrosian Library in Milan and do research there. And he came across these several volumes,

something like 39 or 40 volumes of texts dealing with the implementation of the Council of Trent. And he particularly was influenced by the work of St. Charles Borromeo, who had been the Archbishop of Milan, and conducted an apostolic visitation to the Diocese of Bergamo. And there were like multiple volumes detailing

how he implemented Trent in the Diocese of Bergamo. And as Father Roncalli, he was really enthusiastic about that, like he really appreciated the pastoral renewal that took place through Trent and its implementation by St. Charles Borromeo. He actually spent decades preparing to publish these works for a wider audience. And he was training seminarians to translate from the Latin

and all of these things. And I don't remember how many volumes he published out of that, but it was over several decades. The last one to be published was in 1959. The last of those volumes. And that's the same year he announced he was calling an ecumenical council. So he shut the book. Basically he wanted a renewal for the church because of his appreciation

for what Trent did. And so he wanted another renewal of the church. So Trent was actually a big part of his inspiration for doing that. Also, again, Vatican One was never completed. So there were a lot of things that didn't cover that, it was planning to cover. And you couple that with the fact, I mean, think about 1870 to 1959 or the start of the council in 1962. A lot of stuff happened in the world. You know, you had the communist revolutions. So you had the rise of the communism in China and in Russia. You had technological advancements like we'd never seen in the history of humankind.

I mean, you think about the technology from 1870 to 1962. I mean, airplanes, automobiles, even the typewriter was like fairly new during the Vatican one, like no one had one. You know, telephones, television, radio. Yeah. The world had just changed, travel. I mean, the mixing of cultures

like that took place during that time period. You had the first world war, the second world war, the Korean war, Vietnam was going on, right? You basically no longer had any confessional states, meaning Catholic countries that were explicitly Catholic. So Christendom is pretty much over. You've got these huge cultural movements going on. And so-

This is so helpful. Yeah. Because it's so easy to look back with historical ignorance and wonder why it was even called in the first place. And as you say, these people are overly critical sometimes of the Second Vatican Council. And this is really helpful to realize why the church decided that something had to be done, said some kind of renewal had to take place. Can you keep talking about this sort of stuff? Because this is really fascinating. Yeah, you know, I think, I know I'm not a historian, but

I would be hard pressed to think of another time frame of 90 years or so. Yeah, with seismic. Where that much change happened to humanity at the same time. And especially when you think about Europe, which traditionally was Catholic, right? I mean, France was the eldest daughter of the church. It became very anti-clerical to the point where like, you couldn't even teach, like people had to go study in Catholic universities outside of France.

There was that much animosity towards the church. After the two world wars, I mean, there was a lot of dismay and despair. That's why you think of like German philosophers and how dark they are, right? There was a lot of concerns there, the scientific advancements happening, those sorts of revolutions.

So politically, culturally, technologically, the way people thought, let's face it, even philosophy was sort of really struggling, right? I mean, you had these new thinkers coming up and people weren't even really trained in classical philosophy anymore or to the extent that they used to be. So it's like, okay, there's a lot of stuff going on.

We probably should address it. Let's try to explain some basic Catholic beliefs in a way that people can understand it. And so, the Second Vatican Council, largely, he wanted it to be renewal within the church. So he wanted the church to be revived from within. He wanted to try to help reunite Christians together. And he wanted it to be missionary. So it's like, how can we spread the message of the gospel to the world? And when you say renewal, what is that?

It's always one of those questions, I think. But I think sometimes we have this picture that the Catholic church was great in the 1950s and early 60s and then Vatican II ruined everything. Yeah, but that's not the case. Okay. And if you if you talk to people from that time period, they'll tell you that. But think about just as one example, you know, then Ratzinger before he be long before he became Pope Benedict the 16th, right? He wrote an article in the late 1950s and right? He wrote an article in the late 1950s, and depends how you translate it, but it's either like the new pagans or the new heathens in the church. And he

basically said, we have a facade, like people are culturally Catholic, we've got the buildings, they're having the baptism in the First Communion parties, but they're pagans. These people coming to church don't really believe. When did he write that? It was like 19... I'm not positive. It was like 1958, 1959, something like that. Yeah. 57, I don't know. But before the renewals in the litgy. Oh yeah. It was well before Vatican II. I mean, it was at least four or five years before Vatican II, I think. And he's basically saying, look, this is a facade and it's going to come crashing down.

There's that German pessimism again. You know, because he basically was saying, look, like we're passing out the sacraments of initiation like candy. And I'm highly paraphrasing here. But it's basically what he's saying is we're baptizing babies to parents that no have darkened the door of a church in years. Or, you know, people are going to mass but they're not living the faith. They don't really believe. It's like you do these things because it's the cultural thing to do. So you could say that the renewal, I guess renewal always means this in a way, but it's so that Catholics can know what they believe, why they believe it, and be inflamed with

love for Christ and the mission of the church, right? I suppose. Right. And for other people to know, you know, take advantage of the development of mass media. Like, let's get people to know, you know, what we actually hold. And I also think people have a pie in the sky view of the liturgy. Like if you go to a traditional Latin Mass now,

it's people that are there because they want to be. And because they have a particular devotion to the Mass, the priest is offering it for the same reason. But in the 50s, it would have just been, you know, the normal masses were rushed. They weren't. It's there wasn't like choirs like Scolay at every mass. You know, it was. So I hear that and I hear people say things like that.

Like if you ask somebody from this time period, they'll tell you. And I don't know how convinced I am by it. I hear people say things like that. Like if you ask somebody from this time period, they'll tell you. I don't know how convinced I am by it. Like I kind of want some data on that because it seems to me that a typical low mass is more beautiful than many nervous automasses. And it seems that there's, and we'll get into this later. We don't have to get into the liturgy stuff right now, but there's a lot more room for the liturgy

to kind of fall apart and run amok than there was in the in the Tridentine Mass Right, and we can't we can get into that. I think the point is that The priests were often rushing it which actually still happens. I've seen it there's times when I can read Latin pretty pretty good, especially liturgical Latin and I can read Latin pretty, pretty good, especially liturgical Latin. And the priest learned up a page or two ahead of me. And he's supposed to be saying it, not just reading it.

And so, I mean, that's what happened. When you say, when you talk to people from the fifties or they'll say this, like who's having these conversations? Like have you personally had these conversations? I've had conversations with my mom. I've had conversations with her mother. I've had conversations with her mother. I mean, your logic makes sense. The reason people today go to a Latin Mass

is because they love the liturgy. They love the reverence. The priest is there for the same reason. So you should probably expect a higher caliber than if it's just, yes, the standard thing. I guess what I'm saying is you don't go to the Trish and Lam Mass by accident. Back in the 50s, it was just, we already know that even now,

people go to the Novus Ordo just because they feel the obligation or culturally or whatever, right? Good point. You know, well, that was just the mass you went to. Most of it was silent. So people were either praying the rogery if they were devout or just waiting for it to be over. They didn't really interact with it very much.

It wasn't a pious thing. It wasn't like most of the masses were these beautiful Gagorian chants. Most of them were silent. Low masses have no music. I'm pausing on this moment because I'm trying to understand it and you're kind of sharing some stuff with me that's helping me do that. I'm trying to think of an analogy, right? Or like it would be like if the Novus Ordo as we know it, let's say the best version of the Novus Ordo just devolved entirely into some of these horrendous things we see where like a priest is at a beach with a floaty and he's celebrating Mass. Let's just suppose that became the standard like Mass is celebrated at beaches. And then you had a group of people who were like,

no, we want to go back to like this beautiful, nervous order that we remember. And then if people were flooding in to kind of, yeah, you would get the best version of the notice order at that point. Right. Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah, and I have talked to other like scholars

and older priests that were around during that time. Yeah. And they'll tell you that too. Like one story I heard is that a lot of daily masses were they would choose to do the Requiem mass because it was shorter. So yeah, and none of what we're saying here is an argument for why the liturgical changes that took place were good. Yeah, I'm not. That's a different argument. That's a completely separate question. You could still argue that, okay, then what should have,

what should have happened is that people should have celebrated the Holy Mass reverently and people should have learned why it was so beautiful, what it was, what they were participating in. Right. It's not an argument against the liturgy. It was the pastoral concern of are people just going through the motions? Like do they really have faith? Are they really engaged in what's going on? Are they really praying when they're there? It wasn't a question of just the externals.

It really was a pastoral problem of we're culturally Catholic, but are we really Catholic? You know, are you Catholic just because you're a good Irishman? Or are you Catholic because you firmly believe in your devout? Like those are two separate questions. And the concern was that people really don't know their faith or they're not really living it,

and we need to do something to try to address this problem. And just all the cultural upheaval that was going on. I mean, how do you, people, because of the mobility of society and the great increase in communication, right? You've, you're now encountering people from other cultures and other religions. So all of these questions that the average person growing up before in the late 19th

century would never have thought about. They didn't have Muslim neighbors. They didn't know any Buddhists. They didn't know any... So all of a sudden you've got the Industrial Revolution, people moving to cities and things, and now you've got this huge intermingling of people. And so people are starting to ask questions, like, well, what about them?

What about that? How do we understand this? Like, well, that guy, he's a good guy. My neighbor's a good guy. He's not Catholic. So how do you address these cultural changes that were huge? You know, and given all of the wars that happened

in the 20th century, I think sometimes we forget like how devastating all of those wars were. The atom bomb was invented, right, and used before that it can do, right? So, I mean, you're talking about now we're entering the nuclear age where we could literally destroy the entire planet, you know, if things devolve even further. The Cuban missile crisis, what was that?

Like 63 or something? So it was in the middle of the council that that happened. So you've got to do something. Right. So now his idea was, okay, what he was hoping to do... Now, there are harsh truths taught in Vatican II. So when I say, I'm about to say is one of his things was he wanted a positive presentation of the faith. There's two meanings to that.

Positive can mean, oh, happy the faith. There's two meanings to that. Positive can mean, oh, happy go lucky, everything's great, look at all the nice things we say. That's not necessarily what he means. What he means is instead of teaching by anathema, by what we don't believe. Right, because someone asks you, what do you believe? Well, I don't believe in sola fide.

Well, I don't believe in polytheism Well, that doesn't you can start to piece together what someone believes but it's like why don't we instead of letting Because the difficulty with anathemas can be this they can clarify things and they're very helpful But it also sort of allows your opponents to determine the conversation allows your opponents to determine the conversation. So if you're always allowing heresies and your opponents, if everything you give is a reaction to something, they're determining the flow of the conversation. Right? So a positive response is more like, no, this is what we believe. This is what we teach. And it's on our own terms. And yeah, you might be

addressing questions people have in society, but you're dictating how it's presented. You're not just reacting to things. And I think we all experience that, like when we have friends that, well, what about this? And what about that? And you've got Protestant friends asking questions, and they just go one question at a time. I immediately thought of the difference between Carl Keating's approach, which was necessary in the time and say Trent Horn's approach. So Carl Keating writes a book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, and a lot of what that does is respond to attacks.

Whereas you've got Trent's book, Why Wear Catholic, just putting forth a positive case. Yeah, that's a great example of sort of the difference in genre, I guess you could say. And so that's what he wanted. He wanted a positive presentation. So how do we know what he wanted? What writings do we have? He basically says this. I mean, we have like his address leading up to the council

and he was telling the bishops what he was wanting to do. No, he was also asking them. I mean, before, I mean, you had like three years of preparation before Vatican II actually happened, from the time he announced it to when it happened. He sent surveys to the bishops. He goes, what is important in your diocese? What is going on?

Like, what do we need to address? So he also asked, like, what are the big questions? Like, what are the things that we need to be dealing with? And even Vatican II only dealt with a fraction of what was recommended, or they didn't, you know, it issued 16 documents, but many more were possible, but they just, they did 16. And what was sent back by the bishops were the concerns you've brought up already. I haven't read all of the like actual responses, but you had different issues. Like for one thing, with the rise of communism,

especially the Eastern Catholics, but not solely, you had issues of persecution where you're dealing with it being illegal to be Catholic in these countries. You have basically positively atheist regimes. So now we have new persecutions taking place. How are we gonna deal with this? You know, that's part of,

that was actually one of the factors behind like Dignitatis Humanae and religious freedom. It wasn't just about freedom of the West, it was about in the East. Like the civil governments have no right to impinge the church's divinely given mandate to preach the gospel. People always think of Dignitatis Humanae as being solely about the individual citizen's freedom from coercion, right?

That's part of it. But there's actually a whole, it does list that out based on human dignity and the nature of man, his obligation to seek the truth and come to know it insofar as it's known, therefore he has a right to exercise that and free from coercion in civil society, meaning secular civil governments have no right to rule you on this question. But it also has another section that positively affirms the additional

right of the church because of its divine mandate. And therefore, basically, any no government has a right to impinge upon the church's mission. And so any basically any law that would try to do that is not a valid law. And it was asserting its right against all governments. And part of that was because of communism that was persecuting the church. It was affirming in the face of the advance of communism that those governments have no right to impinge upon the church.

And it is a separate right. It's based, so you have the natural right and then you have the supernatural divine right of the church and it's also asserting that. And that gets, no one even talks about that part of it. For those who are new to all this kind of stuff and they're interested in learning about it, maybe they want to read the documents for themselves.

Can we just give us an overview of the documents, maybe the more important ones, the ones that we've discussed a lot today? Right. So there's basically four constitutions. Two are dogmatic. That's the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, which is Dei Verbum, and then the dogmatic constitution on the church, Lumen Gentium. You have another pastoral constitution, which is Gaudium et Spes, which is the church in the modern world.

And then you have just constitution, which is Sacrosoctum Concilium, and that was the one on the liturgy. That's one of the ones, it's not one of the documents most well-known, it's one of the documents most well known, it's one of the topics most well known. And then you had decrees and declarations, which decrees are more about not just about doctrine but about what we should do or like directives.

And then declarations are more doctrinal, but they're like shorter than the Constitution. What is a dogmatic constitution? What weight does that carry? are more doctrinal, but they're like shorter than the Constitution. What is a dogmatic constitution? What weight does that carry? It's the highest as far as when it comes to teaching authority. Like we give relative weight to certain things, I guess you could say. And it's hard sometimes to find lists of what that means. But a dogmatic constitution would be the highest as far as teaching

weight. Even if it's, even if you have non-infallible teachings, it's still because it's called a dogmatic constitution, we carry the most weight. And there was two within that? Two, right. Dei, Veribum, and Lumen Gentium. So divine revelation and on the church. So if people wanted to read the documents, those would be the two to start with perhaps? Yeah, I would say so. Those are my two favorite, but those are also my two favorite areas of theology

or the ones I've studied the most. But yeah, I think so. And Dei Verbum is really short. It's not very long. So, if I had to say read two, it would be those two. And what are some of the things that Marshall and others have pointed to and said these are the errors of Vatican to? Well, I didn't intend to address anyone specifically but forget that's fine. I have some yeah, I do have a video About that on my own YouTube channel that I did like three years ago cool Cool, so people can check that out if they want a deep dive.

But I mean, some of the things that people point to are. Well, they'll claim there's a sort of religious and differentism. Right, which is simply not the case if you read the documents. Like, so just take it, take for example, another good one to read would be the one on ecumenism, Unitatis Red Integratio, right?

You read the first paragraph of Unitatis Red Integratio and then come back and tell me it's religiously indifferent. The very first paragraph of that document is very clear that while we desire reunion, basically it says non- Catholic churches and ecclesial communities lack that unity that God willed for all believers to have which is present in the Catholic Church. I mean it's very clear that the goal of ecumenism is actually reunion with the Catholic Church. If you read, it's not

a long document, go read it. It's very clear. It says, you know, they have some good things about them, you know, they've got elements of truth and sanctification present in them. I mean, they have baptism, they've got the Scriptures, but they are lacking this fullness of the faith that is only in the Catholic Church, and it's very explicit about all of this. So there is nothing in Vatican II that's religiously indifferent. So even when it's saying positive things about non-Catholic religions and stuff like that, it always has clauses like, for instance in, is it, I think it's Nostra Aetate?

It could be mistaken, but I think it's Nostra Aetate. Where it's, it's the, whichever the one is on non-Christian religions. And he says, okay, yes, they often reflect a ray of that truth that enlightens every man. And then, now, sometimes the translations are not very good on this point. It'll say, one of them says like, I forget how they translate it, but it's almost like,

so often reflect relay of that truth. And then it's almost like, as if it's continuing the same thought when it's not, it's completely like reversing direction. Okay. So the Latin is vero, which I think here is best translated as however, or but. So they often reflect the array of that truth that lends every man. But, however, the church

has always proclaimed and ever must proclaim that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, etc., etc., etc, and basically says, we have the fullness you all are looking for. Like it's very clear in these documents that even when it's being respectful of other religions and other belief systems, it's still asserting the fullness of the Catholic faith and calling people to it as basically the fulfillment of what they're striving at outside of her and they're calling her to union with her throughout all of the documents. So there really is no religious indifference at all. If you really read the documents to give them a fair shake, it's very evident that that's

the case. Ralph Martin refers to several ambiguities that have since been cleared up. I mean, obviously the thing Ralph talks a lot about is this idea of universalism or the idea that all will be saved. And he tries to show that it's not stating that at all. No, it's not stating that. What's funny is a lot of what it's saying is just it's sort of giving different words for the same what you'll find in like the the catechism of Pius the 10th. I mean if you look at the catechism of Pius of 10th on what about salvation of those outside of the church, It says basically the same thing as Vatican II.

So it's not any different than what was before. So it talks about the, and again, it talks about the possibility. It doesn't say they are or they will be. As a matter of fact, it very strongly states in Lumengencium, how does it phrase it? It's really strong. It's basically saying, however, many, so I'm not even talking about a few here, many exchange the truth of God for a lie serving the creature rather than the creator. Like so it's talking about, yeah there are people of goodwill who are just ignorant through no fault of their own

and they're responding to grace in ways known to God alone. Right. You know, yes, that's possible, but let's be frank, many people are in error, grave error, serious error. They're following a lie and you know, being deceived. It's just being deceived by the evil one. So it's still very acknowledging the fact that humanity is not necessarily in a great place. So many Catholics today who would be more traditional, who wouldn't have

backgrounds in theology, but just want a traditional mass tend to look negatively upon Vatican II. So do you think that has to do with what they've heard about the documents? Or what they think the repercussions were because of what they would attribute to the Second Vatican Council? Probably both. Both. They reinforce each other. So what do you think are some myths about, like what do you see online? And you see people say things, you're like, I'm sorry, you mustn't have read them. I mean, we've already talked about a couple, but... Right. I mean, one of the ones that still boggles my mind

is the, all of the arguments about the word subsistit in, the phrase subsist in the Catholic Church, right? The one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. Why didn't it just say is the way that Mistechi corporis did? Why did they replace it with subsistit in? And here's, just do a little bit of research and you'll find out why pretty clearly. First of all, subsistit in is used by, I think it was Gregory the Great. It's in the Baltimore

Catechism. It uses the term the church subsists in all ages and that sort of language. What's funny is, it's widely believed that Sebastian Trump, who was a strong, Thomistic, scholastic theologian, the right-hand man of Ottaviani in many ways, was the primary ghostwriter of the encyclical Mestice corporis. He's also the one that recommended the phrasing subsistit in in Lumen Gentium. And the immediately prior phrase, so in the draft before subsistit in gets used, it said is present in, ad sum,

I think it's ad, or ad est in. And he's like, how about subsistit in, subsists in? As a scholastic, he's, the reason is that subsist has the sense of a personal mode of existence. Let's say Aquinas talks about the Trinitarian persons as subsistent relations. It's the same route, right? And so it identifies or it specifies identity over time

that it's the self same subject across the ages. So when it says the one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, it means by personal identity across time. So it pardores or endures as the self-same entity. So it's not just is, which is kind of a generic, there's many ways you can use the verb to be, right?

So it's stronger. Yeah, it's in many ways stronger. It's specifying the ontological type of existence. It's a personal mode of existence across the ages as one in the same subject. And it's like, this was a scholastic term recommended by one of the most traditional scholastics in the council, and people are saying this is some liberal term.

Not only that, the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, I believe twice already addressed that question. People said, oh, well, you're saying, does this mean that the one church of Christ could also subsist in other churches or ecclesial communities? It says absolutely not. You can't, no, you can't. I think it was Dominus Jesus, I believe, in the year 2000, has a very strong statement about that. He was saying that interpretation is completely contrary to the meaning of the document. So it's already been settled that that's not what it means. So a Catholic can presumably think that a document could have said things better. That's not the problem.

What is a Catholic not able to do regarding the documents and the council? Right. You can't just reject them out of hand. I mean, we are, there are levels of ascent required depending on the level of teaching, right? So dogmas are taught by the church to be directly divinely revealed. So they require the ascent of faith. So English is a little bit fuzzy

because like we use the word belief can, I mean, it has vastly different levels of meaning itself. Right? Like I believe something can be either, well, I think that might be true, but I'm not sure. Or it can be, I assent with faith, I believe. Right? Like as in the creed. Then you have secondary objects of infallibility.

So those are things the church teaches that are true but not necessarily directly divinely revealed. So those we have to hold. So you must hold that this is true. So, and the only difference is between because the ascent of faith is only owed to God himself. So if it's something we know is true, but it's not necessarily directly revealed, and it's only logically necessarily tied to it, then that's why it's a different level of ascent. But in both cases, this is true. For non-definitive teachings,

we owe what's called the religious submission of intellect and will, obsequium. So it's sort of like the presumption goes in the favor of the magisterium. Like, and you have to, and it is a submission of the mind and the will. So if you think about that for a minute, you're assenting with your soul,

your mind and your will basically ascent to that teaching. That's, it's not- When you say will, it sounds like you not only have to will basically assent to that teaching. That's, it's not. When you say will, it sounds like you not only have to try to agree with it intellectually, but you have to want to try to agree with it intellectually. Is that what that means? Yeah, I mean, it's stronger than people think. Just because something technically

has not been dogmatically or infallibly defined doesn't mean we can just ignore it. You know, I think we tend to, oh, well, that's just religious submission of intellect and will and then we move on. No, pause. What does religious submission of intellect and will? I mean, religion, first of all, has to do with worship, right?

So there's a real, you can't just gloss things over because you saw something on YouTube or on some online blog that what's an example of something that's being non dogmatically taught that isn't a dogma that we have to submit to that you see people having a trouble doing today. Oh, that they have trouble doing today. Well, they seem to be unwilling to do today. Yeah. It's a good question. I think what's so difficult about this is a lot of us just kind of grew up in Catholic churches, and we have no training to sort through these things at all.

And we just sort of have hunches and feelings and desires, but they're not, they're not, they're not grounded in theology, or we're very confused when we get into the weeds here. We are and I think part of that has to do with the age we live in, especially nowadays, but even back in the 60s. I mean, if you think about it, Vatican II was the first ecumenical council to be held during the age of mass media, radio, television. And it was being reported on like daily in many outlets.

Now, I don't know about you, but if you ever see the media, even when they try to get things right, if you watch them do that in an area that you know something about, it's painful to watch. It's frustrating. Because it's like when you watch them do that in an area that you know something about, it's painful to watch. It's frustrating. It's like when you watch Hollywood portray a Catholic priest in a Catholic setting and they get everything wrong. And as the Catholic, who knows at least something about this experience?

Why didn't you just do some basic? Yeah. So even when they're trying, they just don't have the background. A news reporter doesn't know anything about theology or philosophy. They can't even get the terms right half the time. But what is most, you know, I, the way I put it is that you oftentimes have to look at it as like an eighth grade book report. Like that's sort of the level you're dealing with on mass media. Even lower for like social media, right? So you can't put a lot of stock in it and So but most people

That's where they're getting their understanding of Vatican to is through the New York Times or through Some news broadcast on it's like Twitter would be like just children fighting, right? I think that's the level of discourse that you're drawing from and what you're learning from It's often based on interviews with theologians that had their own agendas. Yeah. Like Hans Kuhn was known for like being a media darling and he was, you know, not exactly the person you want representing the church. Can you think of something then that you're seeing Catholics struggling to submit to with

intellect and will? That's a good question. As far as the council goes... Sure. It really depends. Like, some questions, like for some people are really big sticking points, and then for other people it's like no big deal. Um... Well, I don't want to cut you off if you can think of one. I can think of a few.

I'm just not sure how many Catholics really actually care about those things. Just give us an example then, even if it's not common. Um, probably, I mean, I guess maybe salvation outside of the church. Yeah. Yeah. Because we have this one teaching that Outside of the church there is no salvation, right? Which you're telling me has always been nuanced to some degree right and then seems to explicitly nuanced in which document

Well, I think multiple ones but it comes up in Lumen gentz. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, so and that seems be, but isn't in conflict with the prior teaching of outside of the church, there is no salvation. Correct? Correct. So I mean, you could go through a whole thing, but one of the earliest usages of usages of that I believe was St. Cyprian, right? And what people don't realize is that when Cyprian's saying this, extra Ecclesiastical Nullus Salus, he's talking to a local church, so like a diocese, that was being tempted with the sin of schism.

Okay. Right? So they are considering breaking apart from the church and doing their own thing and following a non-approved bishop, right? To them, he is saying outside of the church, there's no salvation, like don't leave. So he's saying that to people being tempted by schism,

right? That's the context. It's not a theoretical question about the salvation of aborigines living in Australia Like 2000 BC. Mm-hmm That's not the context. Don't you so we tend to take things out of context and absolutize them We didn't even know about the new world for You know until 1492 or whatever, right? So you know, until 1492 or whatever, right? So there had, the church had already been, you know,

dealing with that question for a few hundred years, right? So even, like I said, the Catechism of Pius X basically says that, you know, when asked, well, can one be saved who's not a member of the church? And it basically says, well, can one be saved who's not a member of the church? And it basically says, well, yes, under these conditions. And it basically says as long as they, because faith is required for salvation, which by the way, Vatican II explicitly says with faith, like there has to be faith operative there somehow, which so the virtue of faith, which is a divine

gift must be given and somehow received. And basically it says in ways known to God alone, like how this is happening, we don't know. But we know that God wills the salvation of all, right? So I'm just kind of contextualizing this. We know then that every human being who ever existed has the possibility of going to heaven. We know that there are many people throughout history who had no way of even hearing the name Jesus Christ, let alone the Catholic church in submission to the Roman pontiff. So how do you balance? Well, okay. Well then, if we know that they could still be saved without even knowing about Jesus or the church, then God must have his ways

and we don't know exactly what they are. But God offers salvation to all. Somehow in the depths of their soul, they're either responding to that offer of grace or not. If they are, if they're striving to live a good life and following their conscience as best as they can Then yet God's not going to damn them and the way that the the catechism of pious the tenth phrases it He basically says even though they're not joined to the church in her body. They are joined to her soul

In that instance, it's basically what it says in that instance, that's basically what it says. And that has to do with inculcable ignorance and all that and falling into our conscience. So that's basically all Vatican II was saying is like that's possible when we know that's possible. Like, I mean, the phoeneite position, which is no, you have to be an absolute card carrying member of the Catholic Church

was already condemned long before the council, or not long, but you know, 15, 20 years or something, right? So the church before the council was already saying, no, you can't take that strict of a view. Salvation always comes through Christ and therefore also his church because you can't separate the two. If you're united to Christ in faith, you are united to the church. Okay. So if someone is responding to the in faith, you are united to the church. So if someone is responding to the offer of grace in their soul without knowing explicitly what that means, they're still somehow united to the church. That was taught before the council.

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or as I say, TextStrive266866 to get started today. You won't regret it. So let's talk about the fallout after, after the second Vatican Council. Like what happened? Because for those watching, obviously you read sacrosanctum concilium, for example,

and it's well known that it doesn't talk about getting rid of Latin. It says Gregorian chant should be given pride of place in the liturgy. Says nothing about facing the people the priest facing the people and these sorts of things. So, yeah, what happened?

Yeah, I mean, I'd like to see some more sociological studies, but I think a lot of it has to do with the culture in general. Which one? Which go Western cultures, what I'm more familiar with. But like the 60s went crazy. I mean, the sexual revolution was happening. You had the Marxist student revolts in Europe in 1968 that kind of shook things up quite a bit.

I also think there's a little bit of, maybe this is just my own personal experiences with meetings and what happens following meetings. Like you spend a lot of time talking about things. And I mean, Vatican too was grueling. And maybe at some point we should talk about the process, but should I go into that first thing? So yeah, so people love simple narratives, right?

Australians laid back, French are arrogant, Americans allowed. Yeah, and even how true they can often be, they're often, reality is often much more complex than that, right? So one of the things that the media did as the council was taking place was, it tried to interpret the council

through the lens of politics, right? So it was the media that was saying, oh, we've got conservatives and we have liberals. And these are the two camps that are fighting out at the council and who's gonna win. Well, that was like an imposition from without. Yeah.

I mean, all these bishops were trained obviously before the council, right? So they were all trained in somewhat similar ways. It was a spectrum of people. You might have a group that agreed on one thing, but disagreed with that other group on another thing. It wasn't, these lines were not clear cut and dry. We also are, seem to be given this impression

that at Vatican II, you had 2,540 bishops, which is by far the most bishops ever in ecumenical council. Vatican I had like 700 something. So over three times as many bishops from all over the world, Asia, Africa, South America. I mean, huge. Imagine being in Rome during the insert bad name here, right? And they basically just told the bishops what they were going to pass, right?

They wrote the documents and then the bishops didn't know any better and implemented these things because the experts told them to. No, no, that's not how that worked. All of the commissions were headed up by bishops, right? They, the arguments, I mean, the number of drafts you have, even for something like Dei Verbum, like there's a whole book I read once

on just going over the draft documents for Dei Verbum. Dei Verbum is like 12 pages long. If the argumentations and all of the different comments by bishops and what they wanted and what they had problems with and what they wanted changed. I mean, just for that document alone, there's tons of interventions by bishops.

The drafting committees actually had to be able to point to the intervention of a bishop in the council to justify any changes made to the drafts. So even if like Ronner, for instance, is on a drafting committee, he can't just do whatever he wants. You had to be able to say,

these group of bishops are pushing for this and in response we are making this amendment to this draft. So you had to justify every single change made to the documents as they progressed through. And there were sometimes long arguments amongst bishops about how to phrase things and how to do things like that. It was not at all an easy process. You had multiple people working on the documents,

often like someone might be on a committee for a document, but they might only be working on one chapter out of like 10. So to say that, oh, he wrote that document. No, these documents were not written by any one individual. And we often have this narrative that that's how it was. No, it was a very collective effort. And it needed to be that way because I think the In order to because the Pope really wanted a supermajority he wanted this to be unified act the lead the the Document that had the least or the the greatest number of no votes

Was still less than 3% of the voters. I believe it was 70 bishops rejected% of the voters. I believe it was 70 bishops rejected one of the documents out of 2,300 something. Like I did the math, it's like 2.9% said no. That was the least majority was over 97%. Right, so these documents were not written written by handful of liberal progressive theologians that dominated everything and pulled them all over the bishops eyes That's not what happened. Okay? But

How do things get reported in the media? Oh the church is gonna change this the church is changing that the church was there I'm imagining the answer is of course But there was a lot of attention to the Second Vatican Council in the media all around the West and beyond. Yeah. I mean, I was doing some research on it. They were like, during the council itself, there were like daily reports. Wow.

And there was actually a priest who was a professor at the Lateran University who was writing under a pseudonym and leaking things to basically giving his reports to the media. He was writing his own reports under the name Xavier Wren, which wasn't his real name, to give reports. Hans Kuhn was giving interviews, and he had very little, if any, impact on the documents itself, because he denies papal infallibility.

That's the kind of guy we're dealing with. But he was happy to give interviews about the council and to push his own agenda and give the impression of what was going on. And so the media expectations and representations of what was happening was not necessarily accurate. And I think it was Ratzinger that even said, look, we may have underestimated the impact this would have.

Because while we were like focusing and working tirelessly to get the theology right, and like having these long arguments about these minute points that most people will never even know about, we didn't stop to think, how is this going to be received? Yes, yes. So on the other end of it,

like, oh, we were probably a little bit naive about how it would be reported. So while we were doing the right thing, the way it was going to be publicly disseminated, maybe we didn't think about that enough. And I have to think that just like today, a lot of people haven't read the documents. I'm sure it was true that the majority of priests at the time, I't know if that's the majority but a large percentage probably weren't reading the documents But may have been more influenced by the media than the documents themselves or is that unfair? No, I mean it could be true. I think you'd have to I mean during the council itself. I Think one thing you'd have to wonder is Translations like how yeah how what were the quality of translations, if any,

were even available in your language? Because they're all written in Latin, right? So you're a priest somewhere and you're not reading the documents themselves, but you're hearing reports. And what kind of reports? I mean, you said, was it coons you said was a darling of the media? What kind of things were being said in the media that maybe the average parish priest or the Catholic faithful were hearing? I don't know specifically. But it was confusing. Well, yeah. It was all sorts of conflicting.

You just, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. I mean, we already know what the media is like now. You can't trust half of what they say just because again, just watch any news report in an area that you know, something that you've studied, right? And it's usually, even if they're trying to get it right, but if especially if they're trying to push a narrative, this is even headlines. This is even true. Like when, when I'll do a interview with somebody and they'll write it in a newspaper and I'll be like, I didn't say that. Yeah. So that's even true.

In that regard. Yeah. So that's even true in that regard. Yeah fair enough. Right. So this is the first council that we've got mass media reporting on. Yeah I mean this stuff didn't exist in that during Vatican one. There was no radio, there was no television, there were no airplanes, there wasn't massive migration on that scale. Yeah. And now you had instant access. You could turn on the television at night and watch a news report about what happened at Vatican II today. Well, according to whom, right?

So, and that also just happens anytime you're trying to give a simplified narrative of anything. I mean, I don't know about you, but there's times when I'll watch a news report where it's like, oh, that's a really interesting topic. And two minutes and 30 seconds later, it's over because our attention spans are so low. Like it's a five minute report.

You're gonna give a five minute report on something that took like three weeks of intense debate at the council to come to. Like you just, you can't. There's just limitations on that. Whenever you're trying to simply, simplistically and widely disseminate something, you have to give this a certain narrative

and it's gonna come with distortions. And, you know, I think people just had a certain understanding of what that meant. But as I was saying before, when it comes to meetings, very often there's a lot of intense discussion and you're working on things. And let's say you're trying to come up with a policy for a company or something, you're working on it. And you spend all this time and you get the lawyers involved and you have these long meetings

trying to discern how to exactly word things. And then afterwards it gets put on a shelf and no one looks at it again and you continue these long meetings, trying to discern how to exactly word things. And then afterwards it gets put on a shelf and no one looks at it again and you continue business as usual. Right? The bishops were probably, first of all, exhausted because you had basically every fall for four,

from 1962 to 1965, you're having to travel and live in Rome for months at a time, having intense debates with people that don't even speak your same language. A lot of times you had to, you know, it was in Latin. So if your Latin is not very good, it's even more intellectually intense. And then, okay, we'll go implement this in your diocese. And it's like, well, I now I've got a bunch of stuff stacked up from when I was away, I got to deal with, and they're just worried about the day to day.

You know, so I think in some sense, the stuff stacked up from when I was away, I got to deal with. And they're just worried about the day to day. So I think in some sense, there was probably a lack of oversight like on actually implementing the various things that Vatican II called for. Bishops aren't reviewing syllabi in theology classes. They don't have time for that, right? So they don't know what's being taught in the classroom.

And I think a lot of academics did take the council as an excuse. They used the event of the council as a way of, that whole Spirit of Vatican II movement basically came from the academics, right? It was, oh, well, this is, you know, we're moving in the spirit of the council. It was calling for reform. We're changing things now, which is not what John the 23rd or Paul the sixth meant by renewal, but they took it and ran with it.

Shoo-horned. Oh, now this is an, things have changed. We have a new way of doing things. And so now they're teaching people in seminaries and in universities their own ideologies. And then that's be disseminating to, you know, it just gets propagated and that becomes the popular narrative. It's what's being published in journal articles. It's what the books are that are coming out.

It's what people are being trained in. Right. And so, which has nothing to do with the council said, like for instance, a lot of people don't know this, but in the document on basically the formation of priests in Vatican II, it calls for a lot of great things like, okay, well, they should be educated in the Church Fathers. Like, maybe we should go back to the sources, the resource model, like read the Church Fathers.

Biblical studies, it says, should be the soul of theology, right? And they need to have a grand narrative of scripture first, and then they can be trained in exegetical techniques. So basically have a salvation historical view of the Bible, like an overview, and then get into techniques of how to exegete things more scientifically. And then, oh, by the way, so that their knowledge may be deepened, it basically is saying the culmination of this process should be training in speculative theology

according to the mind of Aquinas. It's in the document. Really, wow. On priestly formation. Okay. It's basically, this is how? Wow. On priestly formation. Okay. It's basically, this is how seminaries are supposed to be run. And it basically says so that they may come to a deeper knowledge of these things, they should study speculative theology following Aquinas.

That's what Vatican II called for. That's not what happened in many places. So a lot of the failure actually has to do with a failure to implement what they actually spent all those years deciding on. You know, and I think you could say it's a lack of oversight. Now again, I don't know how much oversight you expect a bishop to have who's running a diocese and doing it like is he supposed to do? Sit in on lectures and make sure that the professor's doing it right? Yeah. You know, is he really checking through syllabi, especially if he's not,

if he doesn't have a doctorate or isn't that theologically astute? Is he going to be reviewing theologians? No, just like do what you're supposed to do. And so let's talk about the liturgy and talk a little bit about what the council said on the liturgy for those at home who may have no background in this because it is strange that you know I've been to many countries all over the world. I've been to China and countries in Africa and New Zealand and the Nova Sordo kind of looks the same everywhere. And it's like weird given what was stated at the council and I look forward to you telling me what was stated after about the liturgy. But so what did the council call for in regard

to the liturgy changes in the liturgy? Yeah, basically, I mean, sacrosanctum concilium is actually fairly long, but it basically to simplify it, there's statements of principles. So it has like doctrinal principles for what we believe about the liturgy and its importance and its value and it's the source and summit of the Christian life and all those sorts of things. And then it has pragmatic principles for how a renewal should take place. And it's fairly general. It doesn't actually implement any changes itself.

It says at a later date, these are some principles to follow for reforming the liturgy. In some sense, simplification, because now it's mostly about the Latin right, first of all, the Roman right. It's not really about the Eastern rights, by and large. The Latin right is traditionally known for its noble simplicity. So there was sort of a call for,

okay, well, if there's things that are just unnecessarily repetitious, like we can kind of pare that down a little bit. It did call for, well, things that it specifically called for that you basically never see would be Gregorian chant is to be given pride of place because it's particularly suited to this rite, the Latin rite, or maybe polyphony. When it comes to instruments, the organ's the most fitting

if you're gonna have any instruments. Others may be incorporated if they can be made fitting. And isn't that true because the organ most appropriates the human voice? I guess so. Yeah, I think that's part of the logic there. No, not every place can afford an organ. You're not gonna have a poor parish

in the middle of a jungle have a pipe organ. But it called, so it did allow for the bishops to make some decisions regarding implementing certain things in the vernacular. Right. But didn't it say that the, but that the, that we should see to it that the faithful knew the ordinary. Yes.

That the faithful were supposed to be trained to be able to know their parts, like the ordinary parts in Latin, their responses, they should know how to do those. Right. There's a lot of parishes now that never do anything in Latin and the people have no idea how to do that, but Vatican II explicitly said they should know how to do this. So my general reading of it and following the work of Ratzinger on this as well is that, okay, well, it makes sense. Like I, you know, I went to the traditional Latin Mass for about 90% of the time for about two years straight, fairly recently.

I now go to an ordinary liturgy, which is beautiful as well. But is there really any point in having the priest read the readings in a low voice, facing away from the people in Latin? Like what is the actual value of this? He's not proclaiming it to the people. Well, there may be no value to us,

but it might be, there might be some other value, like prayers that are necessary on behalf of the people. No, no, no, no, prayer. No, I'm talking about the readings. Oh, I see. Like the, like the, the epistle and the gospel. Yeah. Like, okay, well, maybe it makes sense to do those in the vernacular one. They change every week

The priest probably isn't even gonna know the Latin very well. They know what he's reading Often not always but often they'll just read it in their vernacular afterwards. Anyways, the people do know what was read, right? So, okay. Well the parts that change every week, the colex, the readings, like those sorts of things, probably make sense to do those in the vernacular so people know what's going on. And also the priest, because let's face it, I mean, even if they studied Latin they probably aren't fluent in it, you know? So that was sort of what it was envisioning. And for whatever reason, all of those principles basically just ended up getting ignored. And I don't even know,

because I'm not a liturgical historian or liturgical theologian, so I don't know the ins and outs of the actual process for creation of the Novus Ordo, but I don't even know that the Novus Ordo calls for any of these things to be lost. It's not like now it says, no, we shouldn't use Gregorian chant. There's nothing that says that. That's still, technically speaking, the most appropriate form of music for the liturgy.

Was the three-year cycle implemented after the council? Yes, so that would have been I think 69 or 70, I think. Yeah, something like that. So how do we go from that to it really seems uniform, like the nervous sort of very similar all around the world. How does that not have either a top down approach or guided by the Holy Spirit or guided by a demonic spirit? Like, it seems to me to choose one.

Yeah, I don't honestly, I really don't know it's like When the changes were going on culture and being implemented at the local level. I Think that culture at the time in some ways had a set now granted. It's an international issue But if you're looking at Western culture particularly right it's kind of a hippie culture Right. Yeah, so now it was like the cool thing to try all these new things. And now we've got 1970s folk music is now the norm. And that just kind of got stuck there. That's the only thing I can think of.

I really don't know how, because that's not, the church of nowhere called for that. You give people an inch, they take a mile, right? That's kind of the saying. It's like there's some vague comments about, okay, well, we probably, you know, enculturation to an extent can be a good thing. We need to figure out ways of doing that. And then it became everything's enculturation. Enculturation means Peter, Paul and Mary at the moment. Well, no, no, that's not what that means. And in some sense, the Latin Rite, there's actually the Latin Rite and there's the Roman Rite, I always forget. There is a distinction. One's a genus, one's more of a species, and I

don't remember the technical difference. But yeah, well, because there's different rites with under... That's right. Yeah, Under one of them. Right. So in some ways it's lost its character because that was enculturation. It's the Latin right. It comes from Rome. Like that is where... that's the... its cultural setting. In some sense it became the the utility right of insert your culture here right so no matter where you are impose your culture on it and then too hastily things get added in from pop culture which is not what it was asking for so but what was their intervention as this stuff was proliferating them apparently not so I

think it a criticism that people like Barron and others would rightly. Yeah. I mean, he, yeah. I mean, Bishop Barron talks about the silly season, right? Or the craziness that he saw in the liturgy growing up too, as a kid. I mean, it just, it does seem to be a lack of oversight. And, um, again, bishops might not be paying attention to what's happening in the parishes.

They're not there, right? I mean, if you've got like 100 parishes in your diocese and you're in the Chancery office, like you don't necessarily know what's going on. Now you can say that they should, you know? I think you should say that you should. Yeah, yeah. I don't like to criticize people that have jobs that I don't have.

Cause I, the presumption is always that if I was there, I would do a better job. Well, you know what? But you could say if you were there, you should have done a better job. You can, I'm just tend to be hesitant because I don't think we understand the pressures of an office and what it comes

with. Because we're looking at, oh, they should have done a better job on this thing. Like, okay, well, that was like one thing out of 100 he had to even consider doing during that day or year or whatever. So I just, I try to be humble about those things. Like would I really do a better job? We all think that. But I don't, yeah, I mean, I appreciate your humility and I hope I side with it,

but I think there's a difference between saying, if I were there, I would have done better, and things should have been better. Like you hear about pizza, coke masses taking place. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. I mean, I think it's very fair to say that the implementation was not managed.

And I do mean that by there was a lack of oversight, there was a lack of accountability. And I think some of that was the fact that, okay, we wanna present the faith positively, we're not gonna teach by anathemas, like by condemnations. You know, we're trying to, one, because we don't want the errors to basically drive the conversation. We want the positive truth of the gospel

to drive the conversation. Well, then that spills over later. So before the council, there were instances where the Holy Office could be heavy-handed and was, come in and explain yourself, like when they're just saying, like they're just nothing heretical, but it didn't align with their version of Thomism

or something, so now you're being called in and maybe you're gonna lose your job, you know, even though what you're saying is not heretical at all, to we're not gonna really deal with anything. And there's like no oversight and there's no repercussions for what people are doing or saying. I think that's fair to say that there was not enough managerial oversight of implementing these things,

of making sure that the universities and seminars were actually doing what the documents called for, or making sure that the liturgy was being implemented the way that it called for. I mean it's just fairly clear when you read the documents versus what happened they often don't line up. Was there anything that came out of Rome? I mean how did the Pope's try to curb this craziness. Yeah, I mean, in some sense, Pope Benedict tried, but he, I think, so when I look at like him, his relationship with the liturgy,

it's pretty clear that he was not a fan of how it was implemented. And he was pretty vocal about that. Now, he still defends it in some instances and sometimes fairly strongly, and he'll defend the objective, not only validity, but even legitimacy of the right as it's on the page. But he still was not a fan of many of the changes that came that were not called for by the council. But he's a man of principle. And one of his big criticisms of the implementation

of the churchical changes was the fact that it was a top-down heavy-handed thing, like overnight we're gonna change this and this house is gonna be done. So if that's his main criticism, the last thing he wanted to do was by an overnight thing, I's going to be done. So if that's his main criticism, the last thing he wanted to do was by an overnight thing, I'm going to completely reverse direction and change things. And you're going to do it my way now. No, that's, that's fair. When he knows he's going to die

or maybe retire within a few years. And then the next guy could do it again. Because he does say, there's times when he says, look, I think at a random makes a lot more sense, but I also don't want people to have liturgical whiplash. No, that's fair. Well, we're doing this. Oh, now we're doing that. Oh, now we're going to do this again. Yeah, yeah.

And he was worried the damage that could cause. Yeah. So his whole strategy of samorm pontificum, I think was he really did want it to be a mutual informing where it was like, okay, I want this to happen from the ground up. I want it to be gradual, not overnight. I don't want it to be my liturgy that I wish everyone was doing. I want people to have a greater reverence

in the novus ordo. I want a greater sense of the sacred and better music, and I'm hoping that by allowing this other thing to happen more often, it'll bleed over. And I think it actually worked, and there are places that it did work. I've seen that. And he wanted it to be over time,

because he didn't wanna do the very thing he was criticizing. No, that's fair. I remember speaking to an FSSP priest who said that he wants it to be a bottom-up approach as well, because for many of us, we grew up in the nervous order. This is our tradition, the tradition we feel fondness for. And if that was to be pulled out from under us in the way that the Tridentine Master's pulled out from under those who love that, that you could see how that could end poorly, but let's just focus on like one change, like at orientum, you know, like how did that change universally unless someone was dictating it?

I honestly don't know. I have, I think, again, I'm not a liturgical scholar, so it's, it's hard for me. I think there was some sense of the altar, like in the temple, for instance, is not against a wall, right? And the altar is technically not the place of repose. Like in most older churches, you have the tabernacle basically on the altar or on the wall that the the altars up against right? So you have the tabernacle here on the altar here Well that kind of confuses things because the liturgy is not being offered to the Eucharist

right, so There's a sense in which the altar of sacrifice is independent of the place of repose. Okay. Okay. I think that's part of the argumentation. Again, not a liturgical scholar. Why it got turned around, I don't, I honestly don't know. I could see someone making the argument that this is, you could argue that this was Holy Spirit led.

I'm not saying I agree with that. I'm saying you could make that claim that if there's no top down requirement that priests now face the people and yet within a span of how many years, every priest essentially is facing the people. Right. I understand. Although in some ways it was top down because it wasn't like the people were asking for it. Right. So, but I don't know. I honestly, I just don't know. I'm ignorant about who decided this. I'm sure people have lots of opinions. We're watching right now. Maybe you know. Yeah, I don't know. I am generally curious myself. I can see, I, I, I'm sympathetic to someone making the argument that this, uh, better illustrates, you know, uh, Christ,

the bridegroom giving himself to the church and the tabernacle being like the marital bed through which he gives his body. Like I can even see that, but there's there's sort of sure those were the arguments being made. I mean, there's sort of a pragmatic reason, which is if you're going to be saying things out loud now, ah, you might need to be, your voice might need to be projecting towards those who are going to be hearing it. So that might be like a pragmatic reason. I'd be interested how many priests decide

thought, well, no, I'm not going to do that. And then how many of them were persecuted as it were and told that they need to get in line. So the question is, I honestly just don't know how that became like the norm. What's the future? I mean do you ever think about it? What's the future of the nervous order? Where does this end? These liturgy wars? I honestly don't know. I don't either. No one does, I guess. Yeah, I mean I don't like making predictions on anything. I think I am hopeful predictions on anything. I think I am hopeful from what I've seen in the younger generations, at least, is that there will be a greater move towards reverence, better music suited for the liturgy. I mean, I've been all over the place and one of the worst things almost everywhere is music. So I am hoping that they're going to be a recovery of that

aspect of it. Um, and it's, it does seem to be the case, doesn't it? And I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's because people want to be more faithful to the, to the tradition or if it's just a sort of sociological commentary on people feel rootless in this new age and we want to reconnect to the past in a way that we didn't in the 80s, maybe in the 90s? I don't know. You know, I, I've been told that some people actually prefer them new music.

I have our time believing that. What, when they say that, what do they mean by the new music? The standard Amchurch hymnals that you have. Nobody so I'm like no one does I said at the other day I was like nobody likes this like in 1970s folk music is not contemporary It's not yeah, it's not Relevant back with the old so it has like why is this the thing and I don't know you know, I I it has like, why is this the thing? And I don't know.

I think objectively speaking, like agorian chant, polyphony are just more beautiful. Now I do think sometimes it gets too opulent when you have like 37 vowels for one vowel in the actual word. Like I like more simple chant myself, but I think it's just objectively more beautiful. And so this is my little spiel on liturgical music, if I may. Let's do it, please, go for it.

And again, I'm not a liturgical theologian, but the way I look at music in the liturgy is that the analogy I use is a good soundtrack to a movie. Uh-huh, it doesn't get in the way. Right, it doesn't get in the way. You almost don't even notice it's there, but it's amplifying the actions taking place on the screen If you were to watch a World War two movie where you have a soldier returning from battle after being away from his family for three

years You know he has a child that's now two and a half that he didn't even that was born while he was away fighting in Europe and he comes off the train on the platform and sees his wife and child for the first time and then da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da like it completely ruins the scene. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Well, you then believe that the scene is communicating something other than it is or was meant to be. Yeah. Like this is a joke. Yeah. Unless it's a satire, it doesn't belong like the movie Airplane. It might fit, right?

Because it's a joke. It's a satire But the music is supposed to be assisting what's going on. It's not a concert It's it's everything being done. It's sacred music It's music set apart and to help us enter more deeply into the heavenly mysteries taking place on the altar and the worship of Almighty God, it's a participation in and reflection of the heavenly mysteries taking place on the altar and the worship of Almighty God. It's a participation in and reflection of the heavenly liturgy. So if it doesn't seem like something that you can imagine angels and saints in heaven using,

it probably doesn't belong. By the time I played Mama Said from Metallica for the closing hymn in one of my high school masses. Yeah. I like for the closing in one of my high school masses. It's like, yeah, you know, so. I that's and I tried to justify it by saying, Mama, so I was like, I'm Mary. Like, what the hell are we doing? I had no faith at the time. Right. And our teachers just wanted people to participate somehow.

So I just choose some tracks, play it on the CD player. Oh, yeah. God have mercy. And I think that's the problem is when people are, Oh, well, what what's going to be hip and cool and bring people in? Well, yeah, it's, it doesn't do anything though, to help elevate the, the experience of the sacred mysteries. Like you have to have something that, the fit, you know, it's funny. And I haven't really expressed this before, so I might do it in a clunky way and you can see if you can try to understand me.

You know, I wonder how much of this has really little to do with our faith sometimes and more to do with our desire to be again rooted in a tradition that has nothing to do with our faith. Like you see that today, right? The way men dress, the people wearing pocket watches and growing roustaches and things like that. And usually when they're doing that, they're people who love the past or they want to reconnect to their heritage. And so maybe they do tend to be more Christian type folks. But yeah, I wonder if this return to tradition is a spirit of the age in a way.

Well, and I hope so in a way, because I think in the, I think when I was a teenager, I don't know, I think I probably would have been really moved by a beautiful liturgy. I really do think I would have been. But at the same time, I actually found like guitars and drums like really attractive because I had this idea of Christianity. And when I encountered these Protestants who are playing music like that, and the Catholics tried to, but theirs sucked. Protestants were great. They did much better rock and roll music, you know, about Christ. And like, I actually did find that really moving. It really did help me connect with, you know.

Well, and again, like back before the council, most masses would have been low masses with no music. And in some ways that might be a better approach nowadays. Like if we just didn't have musical energy, it'd actually be better than some of the music we actually do have it's funny You say I mean we have The Latin mass celebrated here every Sunday and it's often a low mass because of whatever lack of resources or whatever But my son prefers to go to a low mass because it's just very peaceful There is something beautiful about low masses and I like both I like, you know, solemn high masses and I like low masses. But,

and in some ways the low mass does require you to do more work. Like you really do have to be praying along with it and not spacing out. And there is a noble simplicity to even just like a daily mass with no music, like in a simple chapel, can be one of the most beautiful experiences with like a handful of people. Absolutely. That can be gorgeous. If you're going to have music, that's the thing. Make sure it's appropriate. So what do you, I know you don't like making predictions, but what's the future of the nervous order in America? I honestly don't know.

What was your thoughts on Pope Francis's mode appropriate? I'm somewhat of two minds on it So I won I don't like there's actually a canon in canon law that says you're not supposed like there It's actually a canonical you can be canonically penalized for harboring or for Instigating animosity against the Holy Father Like there's a canonical penalties for instigating animosity, fostering and propagating animosity against the Holy Father. Like people don't realize that it's it's how how does one. So how does one correct the Holy Father or cheerfully and lovingly criticize?

Right. That being so here's the thing. I think typically there's there's, there's different situations and scenarios. If someone comes to me as a theologian asking me, like, I'm confused about this, what are you thinking about? Like, I might be able to counsel them in a certain way, which is different than, I don't like what Rome's doing, so I'm gonna grab my megaphone and tell the whole world that I don't like what Rome's doing.

Yeah, my YouTube channel. Right, or whatever. Like, and my aim in life is gonna be to ridicule him and make fun of him repeatedly. And like, that's what my whole shtick is. That's dangerous. And, you know, it's not like we have to agree with anything popes do.

I was of two minds because as I said, at the time, I was going to the traditional Latin Mass at the diocesan parish like 90% of the time. Like- Is that since ceased? Just cause I moved. Oh, okay. But it's still going on.

Yeah, they still do it at that parish actually. Nothing's really changed. Great parish actually, but no, now I go to an ordinary now, which is very beautiful in the way they do it. But this is kind of, this is kind of problematic. You've got people like me who seek refuge in the East, people like you go to the ordinary it.

Mm hmm. And we can pretend that we're not running away from what's bad, but we're running towards what's beautiful. But that's not entirely true. I think you're probably going to find Eastern churches exploding around the country and ordinary it's because people are just walking away from. They are at the same time. I do see hope because I do think slowly but surely the ordinary form masses are getting

better. I've seen, I mean, even when I was going to the traditional Latin mass in the town I was in, there were, within 10 minutes of me, there were three parishes with good liturgies. All ad orantum, by the way, which was interesting. So three parishes within 10 minutes, beautiful music, very like reverent the way they were offered. So I was sort of like, I had a glut of options.

I mean, so even when I was going, it wasn't that difficult. I think that's the trend. I think younger people are taking it more seriously. They want more beautiful liturgies. Now, when it comes to the Motu Proprio, I was kind of of two minds. I was sad because I knew what was implementing.

The, my pastor at the time, he had a doctorate in systematic theology. They had the traditional en masse every day at that parish. Every noon o'clock, every single day of the week. But he did not put up with anti-Vatican to like, let's bash the church rhetoric. He wouldn't put up with it. So like, the criticisms didn't really apply to that parish, but the other side of me was every single reason given for the more to Approprio, I had seen firsthand on multiple

occasions throughout the country. I had already for like two years been actively trying to fight that within the traditional Latin mass communities, like the people bashing Vatican II and basically not even reading anything that came out of Rome since the 1950s. And I was fighting those things and I was encountering it time, actually stayed away from the traditional Latin mass for years because I was scandalized

at some of the attitudes and the way people there were acting. Like it actively pushed me away for many years. It wasn't until I encountered this other parish where that wasn't the case that I was like, okay, now I can go again. Gotcha. So I can't deny that those are real problems that take place.

Is it everyone? No. But it's not an insignificant number that fosters schismatic tendencies. And so the reasons were real. And I can't, even if it's not how I would have done it, I can't deny that there is a real problem that needed to be addressed.

So, you know, I'm liturgically, I'm very close to Probenet, just, you know, he's the theologian I've studied the most, you know, so, and I just think he's right on so many things. So I tend to lean in his direction when it comes to liturgical things. And I'm just kind of hoping that over time, that's where things are headed.

You see that even if you look at big Catholic conferences in America 20 years ago 10 years ago versus today So this January I'll be going to focus a seek conference Mm-hmm, and they really put in a lot of effort to celebrate the Nova sort of Reverently, but I don't think if they were around 20 years ago. I'm not sure it would have been the same then It was a lot of kind of it could be yeah rock music and yeah, I think I think if they were around 20 years ago, I'm not sure it would have been the same then. It was a lot of kind of rock music. Yeah. I think it's the trend.

I'm hoping it's the trend. I've seen it in multiple places. I don't know if it's the majority yet, unfortunately, because I mean, I've been to places where the pastor basically agrees with me, but it's too afraid to do anything about it Like I've been they've said yeah, I really can't stand the music here, but I don't know what to do I don't want the people to revolt. I'm gonna get in trouble with the bishop like So even there's still a certain sense of fear of changing things Even when

They want to Just out of fear of how it's going to react and dealing with the fallout. The perception, right? I'm not claiming the reality, but the perception is that Pope Francis is an enemy of tradition. So given, I think that's my experience. Is that not yours? Whether it should be the perception or not. Isn't that the perception?

I think that's the perception. Yeah. Whether it should be the perception or not. Isn't that the perception? So then for a priest to begin to implement anything traditional, whether that be altar rails or ad or entum or gruori enchant, the perception then is this person is now acting against what Pope Francis wants and maybe what the bishops even want if they're in line with Pope Francis on many of these things. So I can see why priests would be reluctant to start implementing these things. They don't feel like the bishop has their back. Right. And some of that was even before he was Pope that I'm talking, like experiences

I had even before then that they were just afraid of the pushback and what it was going to cause. Or, you know, the just people worried about implementing changes. And then other people come in and just change things overnight. And then, you know, there's different ways of, I guess, handling that prudentially. But one thing I would like to see, okay, this is just sort of my pie in the sky. This is what I wish would happen.

Is that in every single parish, there was on every Sunday out of however many you have, three, five, whatever, just give one mass, I don't care if it's seven o'clock in the morning, one mass in the Nova Sordo done mostly in Latin except for the readings and collocs and that kind of thing with either no music or Gregorian chant. Incense at orientum receiving kneeling on the tongue like one novice or to mass.

That's it just in every parish across the country or the globe and then what would happen those one. Yeah just give us one mass a weekend that would have done extend that what would then happen is those those masses would explode And all the rest would Peter out exactly because it seems to me if you really want a Eucharistic revival within the Catholic Church And I can just tell you two things to do you you don't need all these committees just add orientum Altarail do that Yeah, don't you think yeah, so why isn't why do you think this one? But you don't want to answer that if I ask you well, why isn't you think? So why isn't, why do you think that? But you don't want to answer that if I ask you, well, why isn't that happening?

Because that's too critical. Well, it's not, no, I don't think, I think in some ways, just the law of inertia tends to apply to even the church. Like there's a fear factor and And there's also the issue of pastors can be reluctant to change things, because if they know they're gonna get moved in six years, by the time they even get the parish

to come around to their side, someone's gonna come in behind them and change it again. You know, there's a sense of, it's just easier to maintain the status quo. And I think for the liturgy to get better it's going to require people to say enough's enough okay and we're going but they're doing that then there has to be there has to be they are there's got to people coming behind them that are gonna continue it

but you're saying they should be able to say enough's enough but not from a big platform because it seems to me that a lot of these you know I don't have a But you're saying they should be able to say enough's enough but not from a big platform because it seems to me that a lot of these... No, I don't have a problem with people voicing their desires for the liturgy or what they would like to see addressed by the Vatican. I don't have a problem with that. You're talking about expressing your pastoral needs. Now I do think the problem is when it comes to a lot of these things,

the way things are supposed to go is you're actually supposed to go to certain people in the chain of command. Like, okay, that's what you want. Have you told your bishop that? No? Okay, but you told the world. Okay, did you tell your pastor that?

No, I went on Twitter. It's like the faithful aren't even handling it. If I imagine, imagine if the nintzio of the United States got an influx of letters talking, like asking if anything can be done about how poorly liturgical music is the United States, but no one's doing that. They're, yeah. I want to push back against that a little bit. I think a lot of, a lot of parishioners probably are speaking to their priests may have brought it up to their Bishops and just feel stonewalled like they've just encountered the stonewall of bureaucracy and they're frustrated and they might actually have

more success in speaking about this publicly I If I had to guess I'd say it's a very small percentage of the people talking about it online I think most people expressing their ire online are not doing that because they're assuming that will be the response in advance. Well, I know my priest, he's a crazy progressive liberal, he's not gonna listen to me anyway, right? And I understand that.

I mean, actual confrontation with a human being is not a comfortable thing. It's much easier to just spout off To the atmosphere and let everyone know our rage. Mm-hmm, but that's not going to change anything Then it's actually I think actually could hinder. Well, I think it has hindered it. I think that's true But I'm not sure it won't change anything Why why do I not think that because Because I think you look at the people that we're referring to who are kind of airing their grievances about the state of the liturgy.

There's a ton of people watching these people and you could say, well, that's because outrage gets clicks. But it's also true that there's a legitimate outrage, I think. No, there is. And I, you know, I think one of the problems is there are legitimate complaints and concerns that people have that are not being addressed and they haven't been addressed for decades. And no one is doing anything about it. And I do think that's legitimate concern.

I do think there's matters of prudence for how you go about it. I don't, for instance, this is just my opinion. As I said, I love the traditional Latin mass. I love the ordinary liturgy. Often I do not appreciate the way the Novus Ordo was celebrated in practice in particular places. I do not think it's one thing to say let's let's educate people on what good liturgical music looks like. Let's educate people on what a good liturgy looks like and let's

just talk about the beauty of the liturgy and give them examples of it. It's another thing to actively try to get people who are not against the novus order to become against the novus order. That's not the same thing. I've said this before that it seems to me that there's a good, maybe not, there's several very popular YouTube channels that seem to be less interested. Seem to be less interested seem to be. All right, so this is just about perception. Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems to be less interested in converting people to the Catholic faith and they seem to be more interested in converting novoselda Catholics. Yes, I think that's, I think that's right and I think what it's, it's, but then I don't even know if that's wrong

because what are they trying to do? They're trying to, they're trying to share with people the beauty of the tradition that was stripped from us. I had this experience in Wisconsin. I went to a beautiful Byzantine monastery, spent an eight day silent retreat there. It was wild. I never knew how difficult silence was by day three. I was just really hoping that one of the monks would strike up a conversation because I was so lonely. It was a beautiful time. But we went to the local museum and this town was founded by Catholics. And as I'm in there, I found myself just really angry because what we're looking at is all of these artifacts from the pre- II church, all of these

beautiful things, the beautiful vestments, the beautiful canopies. And I'm like, what the hell, why was this stripped from us? So no, and I agree with you. And those, those are some of the legitimate things. Cause again, Vatican never called for that. I never said to do this. So we had a new iconoclasm that took place unwarranted. There was, there's never been any directive to do that. So we have every reason to complain. I guess what I'm saying is there's productive ways of trying to assist and build up beauty. Yeah. Like truth, beauty, and goodness. Yes, foster beauty. You can do that without attacking the right itself. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I would say that if I could point to one person

who seems to be doing that, I would say it's Bishop Robert Barron. I don't know, you have to say that because you work for him. But when I see even just the quality of the books you put out, the first thing people say when they hold a word on fire book is, this is beautiful. Yeah, it is. They do a great job. And have you evangelization in Culture Journal we have? Yes. Oh, it's glorious. Yeah. So I'm so grateful to that. And have you seen in what else is happening? What else is if you're out of speak on this, how has Bishop Robert Barron kind of implemented some of these more beautiful things? I mean, you probably knew him when he was Father Barron.

No, I didn't know. No, I didn't know. I mean, I knew who he was, of course. Does it extend beyond the books and the journals? Is he trying to encourage and foster some of these kind of liturgical changes that you and I have said would be good? That I don't, I can't speak to that. I think so, but I can't really speak to that side of it because I'm not involved in, like

I work for the Institute subsection. I don't know everything going on in all of the other departments. Yeah. All the time. I put it this way then, to put it safely, I can't imagine anyone who listens to Bishop Robert Barron reads the book shawl putting out I can't imagine them and let's say they're a priest I can't imagine them being happy with like 70s hymnals and guitars. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, no, I mean beauty is one of the core principles leading with beauty is one of the core principles of word on fire in general

so we take beauty very seriously as an avenue of helping to convey the truth in a effective and attractive manner, you know, and I really do think beauty in many ways is ontological. It has being and so does ugliness. Yeah. Um, or in the world is often a parasite on beauty. Maybe it doesn't have ontological status. Right. It's an ontological defect. Yeah. Yeah.

I feel sorry for poor... I have so many people converting right now. When I say I, I mean, people to join my locals, people who are writing to me, they're converting. I just think, God bless you. What a confusing time to convert. Yeah. Yeah, it is. I always say, welcome. Everything's on fire. Great. Right. Yeah. Good to have you. Well, that's, I think one of the things that just worries me the most is are we shooting ourselves in the foot or cutting the branch we're sitting on? Um,

you know what I mean? What's difficult think, is there's no resolution yet. And we're just in the tension of a multiplicity of rights that we may or may not go to frustrations with bishops and scandals and everything. And there's no resolution. Like I, I'm sympathetic, though I would never encourage anybody to abandon, of course, the Catholic faith orthodoxy. But I'm sympathetic for why they do it, because no matter where they go, they're going to attend the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

And it might be poorly celebrated. It might not be. But there's something there that's stable. And it seems to me that people today in a time of confusion just want something stable. Yeah. And we don't really have it. Or we might have it in our particular parish. Right. It's, it depends on where you are. Yeah. Which is not true stability in a mobile society.

So what's your advice then for Catholics who are currently converting amidst all of this? Well, first of all, I would say it's something I would recommend to all Catholics, because this is something easy to fall into. So i'm speaking to myself as much as anyone else. Yeah, and me too. I'm sure you're speaking to me, but the um the importance of mental prayer cannot be underestimated If mo i'm not even going to say most if a significant percentage Of your engagement with the catholic faith Is through social media rants. God have mercy then you're not gonna go into a good place

Yes, you're just not a man. It's look. This is something I like to say Satan is smart He's very wily if he can't get you one way. He's gonna get you the other and this is something I think that often traditional and conservative Catholics forget The virtue is the mean between two vices. Mm-hmm Right. You can fail to have virtue by excess or privation one or the other If he's not gonna get you to go towards laxity, he's going to try to push you towards what you perceive as authentic rigidity. And so if he's going to get you to think that you are in the right and foment hatred for the church because you love the church, and he's going to try

to convince you that you're the real church, you're the faithful rem And he's gonna try to convince you that you're the real church, you're the faithful remnant, not the Pope in Rome, not the bishops, which is absolutely absurd, because even the traditional teaching on ecclesiology and theology of the church is that the church is a visible society with a visible head who has real authority over you.

You can't hold to that theoretically in some platonic sense and deny that in practice Without completely cutting yourself off from the reality that you claim to uphold it's if your temptation is to usurp the rights of if your temptation is to usurp the rights of the church hierarchy and authority and become its judge I mean every schismatic in the history of the church thought they were right That they were the faithful remnant every single group that ever broke off from the church Thought they were in the right and Rome was wrong everyone and

So if Satan's not going to get you to become a liberal progressive, he's going to get you to become a radical traditionalist schismatic. And he's going to tempt you with that which you are tempted. If you don't like lemon meringue and you like blueberry pie, he's going to give you the blueberry pie. If you have no inclinations towards moral laxity, he's not going to get you that way. He's going to push you the other direction. If you're not into loosey-goosey, un-clarified teaching, he's going to push you in the opposite direction and make you think that you know better than Rome, than the magisterium. And without even knowing it, you're going to

find yourself rejecting in practice what you claim to uphold in theory Which is that the church has divine authority to teach in the name of Jesus Christ And When you get to that it's really hard to turn that ship around. Yeah, and so My advice honestly is You My advice, honestly, is you need before you click on anything regarding social media, first of all, don't if something doesn't affect you in your life directly, it's not your job to go looking up all the anger about it online. Right.

But if you're not reading the sacred scriptures and meditating on the word of God and spending time in mental prayer, you have no business being on Twitter or on YouTube or looking at watching people spew vitriol at the church from within the church online all day. That is not virtuous and no saint in history would say that it is. And we need to take that seriously even for faithful Catholics that are That watch good content online it's like your priority really does have to be prayer because I

Get the sense against my perception. Maybe not the reality that a lot of traditional Catholics have very poor prayer lives They like to talk they like to yell and argue. A lot of conversations can be about why other people are stupid and wrong, and there's anger and hatred. And that's the majority of what you get out of religious conversations with them. That's not my perception. When I think of certain personalities on YouTube who are frustrated and angry, I suspect they've got pretty solid prayer lives. I can't imagine that these people aren't going to.

I'm not even talking about the personalities. I'm talking about people that all day binge watch. Okay. You know. I see. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I see. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, um, I'm going to have Michael Boris on the show soon who I actually really enjoy in it on a personal level,

but I don't think it would be good for your soul to watch him every day. Right. And I'll say that to him too, you know, with, with gentleness. But it's like if every day I'm clicking into my daily dose of outrage about the church. And I think there's, I don't know, I, I, but see, If every day I'm clicking into my daily dose of outrage about the church and I think there's I don't know. I see I'm torn because I think that someone's got to be calling out. Predator priests, predator bishops, and I'm glad they're doing it. And I'm glad you correct me. OK, but I'm glad they're not going through the appropriate channels to call out these certain folks.

Right. Or maybe I understand. Maybe I hope that they're doing both. I think when I think when Church Millet and first came out, it was like a shock to the system for many Catholics, because we all kind of just felt like we were part of the same team. And then they started coming out swinging at bishops and priests. And I think most Catholics had a really bad taste in their mouth. And then after the McCarrick scandal, all this stuff

and then the kind of proliferation of YouTube channels that were criticizing the Holy father. Now it kind of makes church militant look tame. I mean, Boris just came out with this video the other day that was excellent, where he was just going after people who were claiming that Pope Francis isn't the Pope. It was really awesome. He's been doing that a lot lately. Where are we? Where are we in church history where church militant looks like the kind of tame one? What am I saying? I guess I'm saying it's a confusing time and I don't know what the answer is and I think most people feel like that they agree with you and me that we shouldn't be just criticizing the

hierarchy. And I get the and I do get the I guess what I'm saying is try to turn your concerns into something positive like if you're not actually trying to come up with a way to approach the bishop or the pastor or the nuncio in a positive, like say, look, these are my concerns and here's why. And to bear your heart and your soul to them, to your pastors, because they're not gonna, if the sheep's biting the shepherd, don't expect, like, but if the sheep's biting the shepherd don't expect like but if the sheep is saying look I'm wounded I'm hurt yeah like ice and just be on like I really struggle with this like when I go to mass I love the mass I love the

Lord in the Eucharist but when I go to this these masses it's like it feels like a joke and it upsets me and And like, you're just honest about that. And you come from a place of, I need your pastoral care. You know, that you're probably gonna get a better reaction. Like think about it, if you're in a job and you've got a meeting with the president or vice president or whatever, and you go in there guns blazing,

telling them how wrong they're doing with anything and why didn't they do it this way and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, versus, hey, you know, I've got a thought. What if we consider doing this? You know, I'm just throwing it out there. It's just an idea. You know, do you think this would work

and help the company out? Which one is gonna be received better? Right, and you might be surprised that the CEO or vice president or whatever comes back and says, actually we thought of that three years ago and we did a test run of it and it absolutely failed because we didn't consider X, Y or Z.

And then you save yourself from looking like an idiot who thought that he knew everything, right? We have to be more prudent with how we approach, but not silent, right? Like we need to encourage like, hey, pastor, we've got five Sunday masses. There's a group of us that really would like it if we could just have one of these.

We don't care what time of day it is, we will come where we would like to see these things implemented because that would really help our spiritual wellbeing. That's really good. You know? Yeah, I think it's really good. But we are a very reactionary society in general right now. I think we are people throwing fits left and right. I mean we've basically entered as a culture sort of an infantile stage where everything is an outrage and I am upset and the louder and harder I scream, the more justified I feel.

But there's really no peace in that. Yep. I mean, it's. So if I could kind of string together some of the advice it sounds like you're giving and I would wholeheartedly agree. One of them is like, what does your prayer life look like? Are you spending time reading the scriptures? Are you spending time praying?

Are you taking your spiritual life? Yeah. Has your spiritual is your spiritual life about the scriptures and communing with Christ and growing in virtue, or is your spiritual life just refreshing your ecclesial newsfeed and feeling frustrated? So that would be one right prayer. The other one would be to take seriously what is the sin of curiosity, right? So Aquinas talks about studiousness, right?

As the virtue, correct? And then curiosity is a sin. Yeah. Uh, how would you define curiosity? Because in some sense it's wanting to things, one that you don't need to know. Yeah. Maybe maybe abandoning obligations in order to do the thing you don't need to be doing to. Yeah.

Yeah. And just wanting to know for the sake of knowing. Yeah. I mean, how true is that? I mean, we all we all have this experience. You're on a website and it says you'll never guess what this actor's child looks like now. And you're like, why am I looking at this? This could be, this is the same curiosity. Yeah. And so, all right.

So prayer, avoiding the sin of curiosity, detaching from social media. I just, you have to take in some good food somewhere. You can't allow you most or even a significant percent. Let's say even 25 percent if 25 percent of your spiritual diet on a regular basis Is negative social media rants about the church? You're not gonna be healthy We have plenty of resources in the church with good materials So look, let's focus on actually learning about the mysteries and meditating upon them

Take in the beauty of your faith And let that be your focus. I'm not because even when you're right to be upset about something You can't make that Everything. Yeah Because there's so much that the catholic faith has to offer that's so beautiful and so worth meditating on that to abandon that because I'm just all I can focus on is this one itch and I can't look away. You need to.

I think one of the reasons daily wire is so popular is often whatever grievances you have with daily wire. Um, often it feels like they're looking at you and reassuring you that you're not insane, right? So you live in this increasingly degenerate culture that's lying to us constantly. And they say with great passion and articulation that you're not the insane one. And it's just a breath of fresh air. And so the analogy I'm using, of course, is when you feel like you're in a church that's becoming unhinged, the people who are expressing with great energy and articulation that you're not the insane one, it's a relief. So I think we kind

of I think a lot of us go to it for a relief. Please tell me I'm not insane here. Right. But but I think I think everyone recognizes that to live in the daily wire space is just to become. And this isn't a criticism of the daily wire hosts. But if you're listening to let's just say like four podcasts a day from daily wire and that's how much time does that take? I don't know if people do this, but four or five hours of your day? How can you live a balanced life? And then likening that to the outrage in the church, yeah, it might initially be a sense of relief for you to be told, no, no, you're okay.

Like your desire for the reverence and the sound teaching is good, yeah, relief. But then if that becomes a big percentage of my day, I end up feeling agitated and angry, but more superior. So I kind of, I have this sense of I'm better than these people. These people are idiots. And that's the language. Like just scroll the ComBox section. That's the language people are using. These people are idiots, the heretics, the schismatics and without any kind of nuance.

Right. Well, and I think that's part of my frustration because I am, I mean, just dispositionally, I'm much more traditionally minded, but that means I expect more of my side. Yeah. And when I see people in the name of tradition or conservatism say things that are just not true, lying about the council and what it taught or what it said, not giving it, you know, even bothering to read it and actually take it in and even bother trying

to have any sort of, you know, obedience of intellect and will, or just blowing things up out of proportion. Like I call it a soap box or soap opera, soap opera approach to the church and the council. And that where it's we're going to sensationalize this is going to be like reading the National Enquirer. And I'm going to tell you this story, this tale about what happened and blow in it. Oh, this guy was in this room writing on this draft

document, therefore we can't trust the ecumenical council. It's like, if we did that to every ecumenical council, there's a bad actor involved, I guarantee you. There are bad people in every ecumenical council. Like, you don't vitiate the authority of an ecumenical council because you can point to a handful of people that may have had malintent. That's not how this works.

Like we forget the incarnational character of the church. And yeah, the wheat and chaff will always be there. Well, when we say that we believe that Christ established this church and that it has real authority, and that real authority is invested in the successors, the apostles and successor of St. Peter, we mean that in an actual concrete sense. It's not a mathematical formula where we're saying, yeah, we checked the box, yes, but then concretely we can pretend it's the exact opposite. And we have to take that seriously.

And I think what I get upset at, at most radical traditionalist things is the inaccuracies that go around legitimate complaints. And that's what bothers me. Or when I see it going into a vicious means or when I see it going into a vicious means of expressing it, where now it becomes hatred. You know, there's a line, I think it's from Luke's gospel, where I've been thinking about this for years, where it says that something about there will be an increase in evil doing

and therefore the hearts of many or the charity of many hearts will grow cold and I thought When you first read it, I think well, of course because also as we all know from our Baltimore Catechism That mortal sin destroys the virtue of charity in the soul and therefore The people who are sinning their hearts are going to grow cold because they're gonna lose the virtue of charity I don't read it that way anymore. I The people who are sinning, their hearts are going to grow cold because they're going to lose the virtue of charity. I don't read it that way anymore.

I think what it actually is saying is that because of an increase in evil doing, the hearts of the faithful are going to grow cold. And that we're in danger of losing the virtue of charity. Because we're starting to hate those people. And it actually gives the point where we no longer are even desiring. Like we might give lip service to I wish they would convert, but it's. Faithful people are always in danger of getting to a state of animosity and losing the virtue of charity.

I'll give you an example from my own life of how I think I would lack charity, right? I asked myself the honest question, would I rather see Joe Biden shamed at Holy Mass by being denied the Eucharist and him kicking up a stink with the priest being, like what's, what am I taking delight in there? I'm really not, God have mercy on me a sinner, right?

I'm really not, and I don't think I'm delight in there? I'm really not God have mercy on me a sinner, right? I'm really not And I don't think I'm unique in this. I'm really not taking delight in the church loving joe biden enough You know to warn him about the reality of hell and the things he needs to abandon repent of what i'm taking delight in Is him kind of being embarrassed maybe? And that god has seen it's an interesting. Yeah, but I think a lot of Catholics would be, and maybe it's both like it's probably, it's probably both. But I think the first visceral thing is really just the thank God, you know, like this guy's a see that's yeah, that's interesting. Cause I would have suspected that the reason is finally someone stood up and did

something about, I think, I think it's both like, you know, yeah. But I think when it goes viral, put it this way, when that incident goes viral, people aren't well, people are probably clicking on it because thank God we have a faithful priest. But they're also excited to see Joe Biden being put in his place and not put in his place so that he can repent, but put in his place because we don't like him. Right. Although I don't know.

I'm not a Kenan lawyer. I don't know, again, I'm not a canon lawyer. I don't know if an individual priest can make that decision. I think it is up to the bishop. So, but the instance could be the priest under the direction of the bishop has done this, or the bishop finally comes out and says something. Yeah. Yeah, I guess everyone would have to ask themselves

that question, like, which are you? Like, what are you actually rejoicing in? I'm bringing up the example just to sort of shed light on all of our hearts, right? To like, what is it that I'm? Yeah, and it's not easy. I mean, let's face it, it's not easy. The world has gone insane.

Like, we've completely detached from the reality of metaphysics of like ontological reality, I think that It it's it's just absolutely insane to me. There's no sense of there are truths about being like things are what they are ontologically metaphysically like No, we can just choose things and Just we just assert our will it's like the Nietzschean will to power everywhere And yet there is no truth, but if you don't agree with me, you're wrong. Like it's these weird

Yeah, the principle of non-contradiction doesn't seem to apply in our culture anymore Yeah, you know and it it's, it is scary. And I think part of the issue is just something I wonder about, cause I have not really studied theology of politics very much, but I do wonder, how do you have a society that doesn't have a common aim? Like if there's no common value that's being upheld within a group of people, can they really be called a society?

If there is no transcendent value that we're all aiming towards and working towards, you know, someone sent me something so silly, you know, a month or so ago. And it was just like a series, I think it was meant to be funny. It was like a series of like High school public school Lessons like on how to clean your room how to have good hygiene How to ask a girl out on a date, you know, and like they were kind of funny, but I was like my goodness, we've lost so much like a Video explaining to a child how he should comb his hair properly, what proper,

you know, and I was like, we don't have any of that anymore. It's like no sense of this is a proper way to treat your parents. This is like how you become a studious person. There's like we've lost any sense of virtue in what it means, like what does it mean to actually be a good citizen or contribute to society. It's all about our desires and our impulses and what I want to do and don't you tell me and even parents now don't have control over their own homes or and educating children today has become a big problem. And now we're basically told,

if you do have values and expectations, that you're an overbearing parent who is, like licentiousness is just, we've gone that way of anything goes all the time. And I'm really concerned about how desensitized we are as a culture in general. The things that we allow to be openly seen in public all the time, you know, that our children are around. It's very sad.

You know, and. So just like the reforms after the Second Vatican Council and the Second Vatican Council itself didn't happen inside of a vacuum, right? We talked about that. So what we're trying to reestablish or the beauty we're trying to reintegrate is also not happening in a vacuum. It's happening in this culture, it's probably not even a word,

but whatever this thing is we're living within. It's bound to be confusing. Hello, I wanna say thank you to Hello, which is the best, not just the best Catholic app on the App Store, any App Store, not just the best Catholic app on the app store any app store It's the best app out of any app that's ever existed Catholic or otherwise I think it's finally time to say that if you want to grow in your prayer life Please check out hello comm slash Matt

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free for three months. All right, we're going to take some questions, not questions, questions from our local supporters. This has been a fascinating discussion. I thank you so much for being here. It's been great. All right, Sirlack says, how badly is mass said on average today after the new missile came out compared to the rubrics? Are the rubrics clear, precise and numerous enough or is the priest formation or spirit

just lacking? Okay, so can I do a meta answer first? This is something that I don't know if this is recent, but I've noticed there seems to be a trend that people treat other people as if they are Google, that they have instant access to all sorts of statistics and data and information that we don't have. Like, I wouldn't even know how scientifically to answer that question of the percentage

of the number of masses. I've only been to a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of masses said throughout. I have no way of answering that, I guess is what I'm saying. As far as percentages go. Now, if you mean like general perception, I don't know. I think it's moving in the right direction. But even then it seems to be somewhat regional,

like certain dioceses, there's a lot more beautiful liturgies than in others. So I really don't know how to answer that. I think the formation question is also hit and miss. My general impression is that the training is getting better, not worse. That's my general impression is that the training is getting better, not worse. That's my general impression. And the quality of people come, or of the traditional side of people seems

to be increasing rather than decreasing. Excuse me. Nick Holes says, I've come to distinguish between the council and its implementation, but has anyone owned up to why the implementation failed so miserably? Yeah, I mean, we kind of talked about that. Part of it's like, I just don't know. But I think it's in the end, the buck does stop somewhere. And I think we can ask you to say it's a lack. It was a lack of oversight. And that does fall on the bishops, primarily, and people who run universities and theology departments.

Fr. Nick says, How can we begin to heal the divisions caused by the poor implementation of the Second Vatican Council, as it seems the divisions have only grown over the decades since the Council ended? And further, how can we continue to build on the teachings of Pope St that people are raising. I don't think we can ignore the fact that the implementation was actually poor and not in line with what the council foresaw or intended.

And I think that alone is a big step because what you're saying is I agree, what happened is not good, but also that's not what it was supposed to happen to begin with. And so admitting the problem is, I think, the first step. In other words, you're not crazy if you think liturgies are done poorly. You're not. And then, you know, as far as resolving that question, that's going to take bishops and priests doing things about it.

Michael Cox says, do you think the way ecumenism was presented in Vatican II documents could cause a lot of confusion and problems? Even in World Youth Day in Libsyn, we have seen ecumenical events that, in my opinion, promote religious indifference. For example, planting trees for great religions. I love your channel. Okay, the latter part I'm not really that familiar with, but in the documents themselves, no, I don't.

I think the document on ecumenism, which by the way is distinct from inter-religious dialogue, they're not the same thing. So ecumenism is dialogue between Christians, but it's clear that it's well-educated people who are in a place to have these conversations. So professors and whatnot should be doing these things. When we're talking about the doctrinal level,

cooperations for pro-life issues on the more local level, so there's stages to it. It's very clear, and it's very clear in the document that the one Church of Christ is the Catholic Church and that non-Catholic churches and ecclesial communities are lacking objective deficiencies in that area. So if you read it, no, there's no indifference-ism. Francesco says, is there anything in the documents, this follows on the previous question of Vatican II, that would need to be revised or corrected by a future counsel? As far as I know, but may be wrong, this already happened in the past? Maybe he's talking about clarifications, about ambiguities,

I'm not sure. Well, I mean, oh no, he's talking about, you know, councils correcting previous statements in council. I can't think of anything that would need to be corrected as an undone or reverse from Vatican II. I, I, there could be cases where something should be clarified maybe or could be clarified. Um, whether you could ever clarify something enough to satisfy everyone is another question, because I think like the question of salvation in the church has already been explained ad nauseam and people still don't accept it. So Jack Kwiff says I've returned to the Catholic faith after 34 years in different Protestant denominations. As I studied the church teaching and catechism, I kept thinking I was never taught this. In fact, I was barely taught the faith at all at home or school, so it was easy to leave as

a teenager. I've read repeatedly that teaching specifically catechism has faltered since Vatican II. Would you agree with this and how best can we go about correcting it? P.S. Matt, thank you for plants with Aquinas. It played a major part in helping me understand the faith better. That's awesome. Yeah, I think there's something to be said when I was growing up in like the 80s and 90s. Most, it seems to me that most catechetical programs were pretty bad and it was, you know, about banners and balloons and, you know, kitschy stuff. I was blessed because I had a family that taught me at home and my parents, when me and my sister

were going through confirmation prep, they actually volunteered to teach it to make sure that we got good catechesis. So that's one thing is people have to do it at home. Really you need good volunteers. I mean that's the thing. I mean they're gonna let teach whoever signs up to teach you. That's the reality. So if you want to see a change, volunteer. And I do think the new the catechism put out under John Paul II is a brilliant resource

that we can, we can use in that. Aaron asks, what would it look like for the church to be more concilia as compared to hierarchical papally dictated? I might balk at the question because in my studies of, so I did my STL thesis in an area of Eucharistic Ecclesiology according to John Zezulis and Joseph Ratzinger. So it's not primacy or collegiality, it's both. Like they belong together.

The way Ratzinger puts it is primacy is understood within collegiality. He's the head of the College of Bishops. They're not two things opposed to one another. They're like two foci of an ellipse that both together make sense of each other. So it's not one or the other. So.

Rob P says, have the fruits of Vatican II been what was hoped for when the council was convened? Meaning, have Vatican II's goals been achieved? If not, how far away are we from seeing them achieved? Some of them in some places have been. Other goals have not been. So I think there has been an increase in success in our missionary efforts in Asia and in Africa.

I think we've actually lost ground in Europe and in the Americas, so that has not been successful. I think the fall of the communist regime in, well, the Soviet Union and like in Poland, obviously there was success. Ecumenically, I actually think there has been some positive movement. I had a professor that used to be a Lutheran in the Lutheran Catholic dialogue. He's now a Catholic on the Catholic Lutheran dialogue.

And you are seeing a lot of former Protestant ministers becoming Catholic. The Ordinarian has helped with that as well. And there seems to be less animosity on the local level between Protestant and Catholic pastors. And that's getting Protestants to actually look at us as Christian, whereas before I think they were very anti-Catholic as much as we were anti-Protestant.

And Catholic Orthodox dialogue has actually produced some really theologically rich documents. And we're still a long way from reunion, but there's been a lot of progress in that area. So before you hear from Monica who says, why do we perceive Vatican II as being vague and nebulous? Is it really or have none of us read the documents? I think the latter is more of the problem. I don't personally find, there might be certain things here or there that I would

ask more questions of but in general I don't think they're that complicated. It's just people aren't taking the time to actually read them. And this question is similar. Jay Milley says, how can we show Catholics that Vatican II wasn't a bad council, but it was the response to Vatican II that caused some parishes to water down the liturgy? It couldn't have been bad if there were holy people at the council. Well, I think it could have been bad. I disagree with that statement. It could have been bad. But I wonder if people

have read the documents I studied under Professor Bushman and it changed my mind on the council I don't know who that is. I think that's a good answer right there is we need better teaching on the council You know and we need to be incurred like that's why we're on fire puts out the Vatican to collection Series that they're doing with commentary and excerpts from other sources And I did a whole six-part series on the Word on Fire Institute YouTube channel called Authority and Continuity. Because part of the problem with the council is the same thing we were talking about earlier where people shotgun questions, well, what about Mary? What

about Purgatory? What about this? And I was like, okay, there's a lot of questions about the council. The problem is they're all separate questions and people aren't seeing how they all relate. So that whole purpose of that series was to try to give a holistic overview of how all these pieces fit together and then they make more sense. So I think, I mean, that's the answer is you just have to have better education. This is a good question because it's something I've heard many people ask or kind of hint at. I've heard that Vatican II did not define anything dogmatically. Is this true?

So there's a distinction between dogmatically and infallibly. Okay. I tend to agree with, um, Dr. John Joy that it did actually have some instances of infallible teaching But mostly when it's teaching things that were already Infallibly defined so people just don't even think about it because it well, it's nothing new. So it doesn't count kind of thing It does seem to be the case in It does seem to be the case in general that at least it did not define any new dogmas. And again, dogma being that which is directly divinely revealed and must be believed with

divine and Catholic faith. So if you put it on that level, yes. But I wouldn't say there's nothing infallible in the council at all. This question is similar. Which of the documents coming out of Atticintu are considered to bear the quality of infallibility? And then someone responded and said, great question. I've been told that lumigencium isn't infallible, but it's literally called a dogmatic constitution. I find determining the infallibility of church documents very confusing. You're not alone. Yes So if this is probably something needs to be clarified, yeah documents are not infallible or not That's not how it works. It's not this document is infallible. This document is not

It's certain statements in certain documents are infallible. Okay So you can have even in this happens even in ecumenical councils like Trent. So, and there were actually arguments among the bishops about these things. So in it like Vatican one, I think this was a, there were some discussions on that. You can have a whole like positive presentation of the faith that includes all these arguments and why it's happening But then it defines something only that definition is technically infallible It's not all the reasons we're giving you why so the argument itself is not infallible. It's this is This statement is infallible or this error is

infallibly rejected So you have to look at the wording, the way something is taught is what determines it. If it's being taught definitively by supreme authority, so the pope or an ecumenical council, and it's a definitive, like we solemnly declare and define that, or this sacred synod teaches that we must believe something or must hold something. So because those are two levels of infallibility. The ascent of faith or to hold. So to believe or to hold something. So if you see that language in front of a specific teaching, that would be it. It's dogmatic because in some sense, even when it's not defining something dogmatic, it's talking about dogmas.

So it might be talking about things that are dogmas without solemnly defining something. Okay. So the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation is saying things that are already dogmatic. The dogmatic constitution of the church might not be defining a new dogma, but it's talking about dogmas throughout it. Like when it talks about the successor of Peter and the apostles and all these things,

it's talking about the dogma of the faith, even if it's not defining a new dogma. So maybe that... So is that why, say, Lumen gentium is called a dogmatic constitution, whereas the document on the liturgy isn't? Probably, I think. Yeah. I've often actually asked myself the question of who decided on which titles, but yeah. Matt Taylor says, what do you think we as a church gained

through the reforms of Attic and II? We've already talked, I guess, about what we lost through the implementation, but what do you think we gained? What did we gain? It's a good question. I think, one, I'm grateful for it because I think it did help clarify some things. For one, now maybe it's because I'm a theology nerd, but I appreciate its teaching on the episcopacy as being the fullness of holy orders, because it wasn't really... There were people debating that theologically before the council. Is being consecrated a bishop a higher reception of holy orders that brings with it new powers, potencies, or is it just granting a priest

the juridical ability to carry out the duties of a bishop? So is it in like actually involving an ontological change in the person through sacrament of holy orders, or is it just a juridical act granting him the ability to fulfill that capacity? And it did pretty much settle that question that, no, the bishop is the fullness of holy orders. So that to me was appreciated.

I think, again, I think we actually have had some positive movement on the ecumenical movement. Now, I will say that hasn't been without its faults because there's a lot of bad ecumenism out there too that does sort of end up in this Indifferentist where I'm okay. You're okay kind of thing, which is not what the document says at all But in the actual dialogues there have been some positive movements. I think scripture study has improved now

There's again, there's been some negative sides, but that the negative sides were already present before the council. I think a lot of the positive Catholic scripture study has happened since and the emphasis on that has been greatly improved. I think the desire for more of the study of the Church Fathers has been positive. I think the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI have largely been very fruitful for me spiritually and intellectually. The catechism as a result of the council, I think you can be tied to the council in many ways. So yeah, I do think

there's some positive. Christopher Sheedy says, are there any urban legends about Vatican II that have absolutely no truth to them? One that comes to mind, although I'm going to say it's an urban legend, I can't actually give you the documentation for this. So it is just from what I've heard reported. So whether that's helpful or not, I don't know. But the line from Shkilebex that about the ambiguities,

we put the ambiguities in there and we know what we're gonna do with afterwards, apparently is a complete uncontextualized statement because Shkilebex did eventually become a rather progressive liberal who was problematic. My understanding though is that yes, he said that, but he was actually reporting what someone else said to him and he was appalled by it.

So even someone as liberal progressive as Skillebeck thought that's an awful thing to say. And it was just one person making this comment. It wasn't, oh, this entire drafting committee under this cardinal has decided we're going to do that. That's not what happened. And so that gets blown out of proportion. Devin Stewart says, why did dignitatis humani not contradict previous teachings on religious

liberty? So that's a big question. There are a few works on this that are either coming out or are supposed to come out soon that I have not had access to. So like Michael Dunnigan's done some work on this, I think for his JCD dissertation that I have not had access to yet but Dr. Thomas Pink from Oxford has done a lot of good work on this and Donegan takes a slightly different view. That's why I'm saying this as a scholar I have to hedge my bets like I haven't read his argument yet But dr. Pink's argument is pretty I think pretty solid at showing

That digny taught to shumani actually was basing itself off of the teaching of Pope Leo the 13th and He you can actually go to academia.edu and read dr. Pink's works on this and he makes a really good argument and part of the argument is the fact that the official interpretations of the drafts Which are called relapsiones where the the person is relating to you how to Understand what they've written. So it's like an official explanation of this draft of the document Explicitly state that mmm. This is to be understood in line with Leo the 13th Because Leo the 13th had already said that you basically have to

Leo the 13th had already said that you basically have two potestates, like two powers, the civil and the ecclesial, and that the civil authority has no power on its own to rule or judge in religious matters, which is actually,'s actually in quanta Cora as well one of the condemned propositions I think it's proposition 21 Was the idea that the civil did have the right to judge? in Religious matters and basically Leo the 13th Says no if the state is acting on behalf if the state is acting on behalf, the church can ask civil leaders to enforce certain things

over the church's own members, but in that case, it's acting as the civil arm of the church. But the civil government itself has zero authority over this area. So that is what it was saying. So the religious liberty question, you know, it's a tough one, but I would read Dr. Pink's stuff on that because he really does a good job showing you how Vatican II was building on actually, and also Russell Hittinger, or Hittinger, I don't know how he

pronounces it, Hittinger, really the more Germanic way. In Vatican II Renewal Within Tradition, he has an excellent chapter on Dignità di Siumane that goes through some of this as well. So those are two good sources. Matt McCloskey asks, does Vatican II prove that sequels are never better than the original? And he says, this is a joke, by the way. Even though it's a joke, there's something there that could be addressed. Right. Well, it's a funny joke. I mean, I do think it was probably a shame that Vatican one was truncated because it was planning to do a full dogmatic constitution on the

church and it didn't. It only got so far as defining people and fallibility, which then left people wondering, well, what does that do to the College of Bishops? Because this is another one of those myths that you see, is collegiality was something invented by Vatican II. No, go to the pre-Vatican II manuals of theology written by scholastics and they talk about the College of Bishops. Like, that's completely, it's just always been the case

since the patristic era. But I do think that that was problematic and so it did need to be addressed. I do, in some sense, I wish what came out of Vatican I would have been already situated at the same time with the other things they were planning on doing. But anyway. Yeah.

Benjamin says in all charity, is it, and you may not know this, but is it a tenant of the SSPX movement community that Vatican II is illicit or invalid? I can't really speak for them because I don't know all the ins and outs and exactly what juridical structure they claim to have. I don't know. My general understanding is that they point to a few things in the council that they struggle with.

But in practice as a whole, they pretty much either ignore it or speak. But if you press them I think it's actually only a handful of specific questions and they're not rejecting the entire council. That's my understanding. But I mean I'll just go out on the limb here. It is my sense that they are in schism and I don't really see another way of canonically and what's your argument that the SSPX or in system because the definition of schism is refusal to submission

to the Roman pot of or those who are in communion with him. So if you are refusing to obey his directives or refusing to commune with the bishops under him and you are separately setting up your own tribunals or Telling your people that they shouldn't go to even a Latin mass celebrated by the FSSP and Definitely never to go to a novice ordo You are refusing communion with the people and communing with the bishop of Rome. You are outside of the juridical structure without the without So the way that the higher again the

church is a visible society you have the pope the bishops the priests the deacon right they all have to have proper mandates to function properly so if you are ordained validly but you're acting Invalidly, but you're acting outside of the juridical structure of the church with no mandate in The proper line you are acting schismatically you are doing that which the law does not allow you to do So I don't and you're acting in a parallel fashion. So you're not functioning in your ordained ministry illicitly and So to me juridically, it it's very clear you're not in communion with the Church. It's unclear to me how the SSPX teach officially because you'll sometimes see

YouTube videos put out on their channel, you'll sometimes hear a priest say this or that, so is it the case that the SSPX like per se has stated that you should never attend a novus automas? It seems to be. I don't know. Yeah, one that. So is it the case that the SSPX like per se has stated that you should never attend a novus auto mass? It seems to be. I don't know. One infamous SSPX YouTube says he would rather die than attend the new mass. Right. Yeah. And I don't, I don't even know what kind of, I guess they probably have a head Bishop, I assume. I don't,

I've probably heard the name, but I can tell you this. Would you liken it to a Bishop, let assume. I don't, I've probably heard the name, but you'd liken it to a Bishop, let's say just on his own assumed authority starts with Danny, a bunch of priests and sets up something resembling a parish. If yeah. So if he, if he's, if he's, or like, say he's a retired Bishop, which actually exactly what the case was in this instance Yeah, I mean if you're setting up a parallel church with your own juridical your own structure

In direct violation of the actual hierarchical structure It's it that is schism. I really have a hard time understanding any other way of looking at it, like objectively. Just because you might agree with their liturgical preferences or whatnot, doesn't justify the objective fact of what's taking place.

They're acting outside of the juridical authority of the church. Multiple bopes have called it a schism. Benedict XVI was very clear that they have no legitimate, they are exercising no legitimate ministry in the church. So you're doing things that the law forbids you to do. That's just an objective fact. So, okay. On a related topic, but different, it seems to me that you have people today who are set of accountants, but they're saying

they're not set of accountants. And it's, it's sort of similar thing. It's like, well, here's the definition of SISM. Why, why, what's the problem with this? And you have others today very well, somewhat prominent priests who have been told not to present themselves as priests like Altman and then other people who will refuse to accept that they said of a contest because they say, well, no, a set of accountants means those who deny the papacy since since this pope. Yeah, no, it doesn't work that way. But just like you did there where you said,

okay, well, let's look at the definition here. You're absolutely right. Like by definition, if you deny that the pope is the pope, because you believe the chair is empty. Now you're a different kind of state of, you're like, okay, because they all go back to a different pope, right? There's no one unified opinion of state ofism, which was the last valid pope. Now, I think the position of Satevacanthism is inherently contradictory, because if it were true,

then the Catholic faith itself would be false, because how would you ever overcome it? If the voting cardinals are all invalid because they were appointed by a Pope was invalid, you could never restore the papacy. The church would be by definite, Satan would have overcome the church. But is it true that one has to be a Cardinal in order to vote? I mean, where is that state? Well, I don't know when that was... Or is it?

It is somewhere, yeah. There's... No... And so even if you want to... Okay, so if that is the case, then even if you want to say John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were valid popes, given that Pope Francis has elected how many percentage of the current cardinals? I don't even know, but...

Good number. Especially since the voting age is limited. Yeah. So just cause you're a Cardinal doesn't mean you can vote if you're. So my point though is even if you're saying that some of the Cardinals are legitimate, you're saying, well, a lot aren't. So then how would you know that the next?

Where would you ever even see the votes to know which of the valid versus invalid ones, what percentage was it actually the necessary majority of the valid ones or not? Mm-hmm. I mean, you're basically getting into a position where, you know, and the reality of it is, just canonically speaking, the only way for like an anti-Pope to be declared is for a future Pope to declare that. So even if you, you know, which I don't think is

even remotely possible in this situation. Right, because we have no cardinals that deny that this was a legitimate election. Yes, exactly. Even then, you, the The theological term is co ad nos meaning in relation to us We still have to act as if He is the Pope unless and if because the the Roman see is judged by no one. There's no way For to actually depose the Roman pontiff Who's currently sitting. There's no canonical process for that. Do you think that will be discussed in the near future?

Should we have a way to pose a pope? I don't think you can. Is my theological opinion. The only way would be retroactively a later valid pope would have to do something. Can the pope teach heresy? would be retroactively a later valid pope would have to do something. Can the pope teach heresy? Well, he definitely cannot try to infallibly define heresy. Right, so he couldn't do that.

Technically, well, there's different theories about this. I have doubts that he could even, non-infallibly officially teach heresy. Okay. I don't even think that is possible. That's just my ontological opinion. Could he say something heretical? Yes.

Could a pope in a non-magistrial capacity say something? Yes. Could a pope in a non-magisterial capacity say something? Yes. That's possible. But I don't think he could bind us to heresy. The fact that we're unclear about this, that this isn't. Yeah, it's all, you know, magisterial studies is a very nuanced area of study. If I were a Protestant, I would be saying, okay, it sounds like you're making this murky enough that you get to win no matter what happens. As an academic, so the more I've studied, the less comfortable I am saying absolutely if I haven't studied a specific question to death, like I've researched all this, you know,

I always hedge my, well, my opinion would be this. And to me, it would be tied to indefectibility, because if the Pope were to bind the church to hold something that is heretical, that would seem to question indefectibility. And so to me me it becomes a logical impossibility. Right. So if a pope were to find the church to the belief that Mary was not immaculately conceived, what do you do? Do you just find another church? I guess the faith in Christ. Yeah, I mean, if if that were to happen, it would, I think it I think it would be a what's the term for it? It would disprove Catholicism if that were like like something that clear

Mm-hmm. I think the issue is people try to take things that aren't nearly that clear and they try to find ways to make it Right clear while trying to defend the church at the same time Yeah they try to find ways to make it clear while trying to defend the church at the same time, which doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. I don't believe at this point because I didn't tell you we were going to randomly bring this up. So no worries if you don't want to talk about it. But I mean, so it sounds like you're saying that the pope can believe heresy, the pope can teach heresy. And by teach, I just mean if you're on an airplane and you're saying things that could be argued to be a form of teaching. I'm telling you something that I think is the case.

So it sounds like an opinion, right? An opinion could be, yes, yes, of course, of course the Pope can believe in teach heresy, just not formally buying the church to that heresy. Maybe this is a good analogy. So when Pope Benedict XVI wrote his Jesus of Nazareth series, he made it clear that he was writing this as a private theologian Yeah So let's say you found something heretical. I'm not saying there is anything heretical in there

But let's say you found something heretical in those books. It's not magisterial So because this is part of the definition of papal infallibility That maybe gets overlooked It's when the Pope is teaching as Chief Shepherd of the entire flock. So it's not even when he's teaching as the bishop of Rome for the diocese of Rome. It's specifically when he's enacting his role because he's got multiple roles. Right? He's the bishop of Rome. He's the, I don't know what the term would be, he's like the primate of the Latin Church, and he's the universal shepherd. So when he's acting in the capacity as the universal shepherd

and is defining something on faith and morals to be definitively held or believed, then, right, so he can teach in all sorts of manners that are not magisterial in the technique, or not level of universal magisterium. I don't think he could bind the whole church to even have religious submission of intellect and will to something heretical. And by heretical, we mean contrary to direct divine revelation.

I don't think that's possible. Yeah. I mean, I suppose popes have spoken more in more kind of casual ways of the last several posts we've had, right? Well, at least I'm thinking of John Paul II, who would respond to letters and those books of his and maybe that's unhelpful. Or maybe that maybe popes ought to do what Pope Benedict the 16th did when he was very clear. Yeah, I mean it could. I mean some things are just obvious. A personal letter to

someone or an interview, that's obviously not magisterial. He has to, basically it's not universally magisterial unless he's basically saying, making that clear. So it has to be, for example, when John Paul the second stated that women cannot become priests, you read those sentences and it's very clear that he's acting as supreme Pontiff in that case. Turned out in the, in the actual, the, um, in the ordination, such as utilities, the document or in, I don't know what document I'm referring to. I'm just talking about.

So you can tell me where there's a few sentences where he states as I don't even know the language. OK, but as universal shepherd, I declare yada yada. Like he speaks in such a way. Church has no. It's unambiguous. Yes. That's the kind of language you need to look for. For an infallible statement. Yeah. For and I think it meets the criteria. Whether or not he thought that's what he was doing, I think it was

still an exercise of the infallible magisterium. Why would you doubt that he would think that? I think there were some comments that he didn't think that's what he was doing. Dear Lord. But he was saying it's already... because sometimes there's some confusion where it's like Well, I'm stating that this is already infallible by virtue of the ornate and universal magisterium So sometimes people think if I'm not doing something new then I'm not doing it. It's like no, it doesn't matter I see. I see if you meet the criterion you meet the criterion. Are you speaking as chief shepherd of the flock? Yes, are you saying that something must be definitively held? Yes. Is it on faith and morals? Yes. Then it's invaluable.

Final question. This is a dogmas only. So it's like a dogma is has to be something taught by Christ and the apostles, right? It's not something that wasn't believed by him taught by them, but then was taught 300 years later or something. wasn't believed by him taught by them, but then was taught 300 years later or something. Okay. Just go ahead and ask the question. Can, can morals be dogmas? Can moral statements be dogmas or is it just doc doctrine having to do with, I, all right. Again, this is just my opinion. Um, I would say yes, they can because there are directly revealed moral truths. The Ten Commandments are moral, right? So if they are in divine revelation, scripture or sacred tradition...

That we're bound to believe, you would call them dogmas. But I do think when I see the statement, he can teach infallibly when teaching on faith or morals, then I think, okay, well, that means even if something isn't directly divine revealed, he can still definitively teach on that, on morals. Because faith is what we must ascend to divine. Vitra-fertilization or something like that, or contraception. Yeah. And it might be an application of something revealed.

So it can be closer. Some moral things are directly divine revealed and we know that But he can still teach definitively on things that are not directly divine revealed in the realm of morals. Gotcha Well, hey, I know you got a flight to catch I won't keep you any longer with this has been a fascinating discussion and I've learned a lot So thank you very much. Where can people learn more about your work? Well, the primary place would be the Word on Fire Institute. So if you become a member of that, you have access to all of our courses.

Awesome. Quarterly Journal. I also do have a YouTube channel, Decluse Views, that I, there's a lot of backlog of stuff on there that you can- Can we put that in there Thursday? Make sure we get the links to his YouTube. I don't post much on there anymore,

just the last few years. I do have a locals community called The Clues Views as well. Yep. That's where I do more stuff. Do you know the URL to that? We'll find it. I don't know, it's The Clues Views without an apostrophe because it wouldn't let me do that.

But I try to do things on there that those are not attached. The YouTube channel and locals are not attached to my official job for on fire. Something I do supplementary to that. I try to do live streams on there. If I'm trying to think through something, somebody's gonna help me talk about it out loud. And I do like just side things.

Like I did a series on Lubeck's Catholicism book and I'm gonna be doing one on just general, basically going through some notes I already taught in the past about systematic theology and Sorry things like that. Well, thank you very much. It's been great. Haven't you? Thanks. Thanks for having me pleasure 121