Jesuit says confusion over Vatican II is normal, even 50 years later

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) -- A 91-year-old Jesuit who served as an expert at the Second Vatican Council said, "I'm just beginning to understand the depth and breadth of the council" and its teachings.

Jesuit Father Ladislas Orsy, a visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, told an audience in Rome Jan. 24 that while every ecumenical council in church history led to debate -- and sometimes even schism -- it always has taken more than 50 years for a council's teachings and reforms to take root in the Christian community.

"Granted we may see a great deal of confusion today; granted we may even see a denial of the council or we may even hear a way of explaining away the council," Father Orsy said during a speech that was part of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity celebrations at Rome's Centro Pro Unione.

Vatican II can be examined as a historical event, and theologians can use a variety of scholarly tools to propose different interpretations of its teachings, but one thing Catholics cannot deny is the church's teaching that the Holy Spirit is active in its ecumenical councils, he said.

Father Orsy asked his audience, "Are you surprised that there is a bit of disarray today in the Roman Catholic Church when this happened in the case of Nicea, dealing with the very foundation of our faith?" The Council of Nicea in 325 affirmed the divinity of Christ.

Nicea's deliberations led to debate and division, he said, but over the centuries "this wave of energy" of the Holy Spirit "quietly took possession of the church and the confusion sorted itself out." Today, he said, mainline Christians, while divided on a variety of issues, profess the basic tenets of their faith using the Nicean creed.

"Just looking at what happened after Nicea," he said, "it is not farfetched" to think that the work the Holy Spirit began at the Second Vatican Council continues in the church and "maybe, shall we say, 100 years from now," people will recognize how deeply it impacted the church.

The Jesuit said he hoped to live a "few more years" so he could try to understand more about where the Holy Spirit is leading the church through the teachings of Vatican II and the continuing process of that teaching taking root in the lives of Catholics.

In his talk, Father Orsy looked particularly at "Dignitatis Humanae," Vatican II's declaration on human dignity and religious freedom.

The Jesuit canon lawyer said the document, approved on the last day of the council, takes the visions of the church, the world and the human person expressed in the other Vatican II documents and applies them to "real-life situations."

It reaffirmed traditional church teaching that all human beings have an obligation to seek the truth and to strive for the perfection to which God calls all people, but it insisted the truth could be imposed on no one.

The document insists on "respect for the truth, but asserts that charity has its own priority, sometimes even above truth," urging the church to model itself more closely after Christ, "who never imposed with any kind of violence the truth that he proclaimed."

The council, he said, articulated a "fresh view of the human person" and affirmed that "by acknowledging the freedom of the human person, we honor a divine quality in the human person," who was created in God's image and likeness.

The declaration, Father Orsy said, represented a transition from "the realm where the highest criteria for judging the person were abstract, general and impersonal truths to the realm of charity and love, where the normative rule is to honor the dignity of the person."

"The ultimate conclusion is not to enforce the truth, but to embrace the person," he said.

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The sad thing about this is that this Jesuit, at 91 years was formed with a pre-Conciliar Jesuit formation and has been subsequently converted over the last 50 years.  Specifically where he states:

“.. one thing Catholics cannot deny is the church’s teaching that the Holy Spirit is active in its ecumenical councils ..”

I believe this typically misguided Jesuit is correct on this point. After several decades of increasingly intrusive modernism growing in the bowels of the church, it would take the Second Vatican Council to shock the church to such an extreme as the initiation of the Novus Ordo sacraments and religion and the strangling of the flow of graces, to bring her back to a traditional love of the Pius V Mass, sacraments, and devotions. Consider that perhaps without the Council and the severe wounding of the Mystical Body, we might have slipped into a more profound state of apathy. The adage “you don’t know what you have until you’ve lost it” applies here, IMHO.

“Father Orsy asked his audience, “Are you surprised that there is a bit of disarray today in the Roman Catholic Church when this happened in the case of Nicea, dealing with the very foundation of our faith?” The Council of Nicea in 325 affirmed the divinity of Christ.”

This is typical Jesuit-speak (as a graduate of a Jesuit education I can easily recognize it) which is to turn an obvious truth into the justification of error. The divinity of Christ is the core tenet of our faith and Nicea affirmed that, which is the job of a council. Anyone who thought that a controversial issue was a heretic. V2′s major duplicitous intent, subject to the hijacking of the schema that Archbishop Lefebvre worked to create, was the reorientation of the faith to be man-centered.

“Just looking at what happened after Nicea,” he said, “it is not farfetched” to think that the work the Holy Spirit began at the Second Vatican Council continues in the church and “maybe, shall we say, 100 years from now,” people will recognize how deeply it impacted the church.

We don’t have to wait 100 years, the impact is evident today.

It reaffirmed traditional church teaching that all human beings have an obligation to seek the truth and to strive for the perfection to which God calls all people, but it insisted the truth could be imposed on no one.

Of course, what is implied here is the Protestant version of “the truth” which is whatever suits one as truthful. If the Council would have succinctly defined “The Truth” as faith in Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His Mystical Body as the only means of salvation, then V2 might have been more Catholic.

The document insists on “respect for the truth, but asserts that charity has its own priority, sometimes even above truth,”

Wow, putting charity before truth is again a Jesuit translation of a new non-Catholic heretical religion that would have gotten his old gray whiskers burned at the stake in the good ol’ days.

The council, he said, articulated a “fresh view of the human person” and affirmed that “by acknowledging the freedom of the human person, we honor a divine quality in the human person,” who was created in God’s image and likeness.

This divinity of man was one of the boldest heresies of V2, taking the concept of the immortality of the soul and our creation in God’s image and likeness, and synthesizing it into a teaching that man is divine. The Blessed Trinity is divine and V2 sought to create a sub-species of divinity that man belonged to.

The declaration, Father Orsy said, represented a transition from “the realm where the highest criteria for judging the person were abstract, general and impersonal truths to the realm of charity and love, where the normative rule is to honor the dignity of the person.”

As a seven year old making my First Communion and First Confession prior to V2, I knew exactly what the criteria was for judging my soul. I also knew what was expected of me in relation to my fellow man. That any of that could be considered as abstract is ridiculous.

“The ultimate conclusion is not to enforce the truth, but to embrace the person,” he said.

Here, the good Jesuit made my final point and I could not say it any better.