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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   30696 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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(Sorry, I’m migrating this over).

Pope Francis has died at the age of 88. My understanding is that all of his plausible successors are more conservative in terms of doctrine. I imagine that Latin Mass will be easier but are they likely to make any significant changes to the Vatican II settlement?

Here is what I have heard:

Theologically Conservative Frontrunner: Cardinal Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Budapest, Hungary. Primate of Hungary.

Theologically Centrist Frontrunner: Cardinal Pierbatista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Theologically Liberal Frontrunner: Cardinal Tagle, ex-Archbishop of Manilla, Philippines. Currently head of Vatican Evangelization.

There will not be any top-down changes to the Spirit of Vatican II, because the Spirit of Vatican II had nothing to do with the actual documents of Vatican II, which are all fairly benign. The Spirit of Vatican II is going to be demolished over the next twenty years by the rise of young conservative priests.

Going to start following https://x.com/pope_predictor

There will not be any top-down changes to the Spirit of Vatican II, because the Spirit of Vatican II had nothing to do with the actual documents of Vatican II, which are all fairly benign.

Can you go a little more into this? This seems like a fascinating distinction.

Also my understanding is that Cardinal Tagle is unlikely to get far because the Church has been doing so badly in the Philippines? Is that about right?

Regarding Cardinal Tagle, all I can say is that failure to generate a thriving local church doesn't mean a lack of Cardinal allies. @hydroacetylene knows more about the politics side of the equation.

The Spirit of Vatican II is characterized by the time immediately preceding and immediately following the Second Vatican Council. I'm not sure what would have gone differently if this "Spirit" wasn't a real spirit, and a demon to boot. Watch the Puppet Mass or the Clown Mass and tell me there's no demonic involvement. (I'm not sure how serious I am being here. There are many who would take this allegation more seriously.)

Rewind a bit. Why did people feel like they could have a mass with clowns and puppets? Before Vatican II, there was a very specific rubric they were supposed to follow. After Vatican II, there was a very specific rubric they were supposed to follow, one that did not recommend clowns or puppets. The rubric changed, but the adherence to it stopped. Priests either started doing their own inventions, or stepped back from their leadership role in the liturgy and allowed lay people (predominantly women who were teenagers in the 1960s) to add things to the liturgy.

The Spirit of Vatican II, most plainly put, is the attitude many took when things that seemed unchangable began to change. Many Catholics didn't (and still don't) understand the difference between small "t" traditional practices, like liturgical rites, and big "T" Traditional Doctrine, like teachings on Christology, Sacraments, and Morality. If you were alive then, and thought the mass is something the Church taught could never change, and then the Church changed it...

The conclusion a lot of people made was that anything could be changed. And if anything could be changed, it might as well be changed by themselves, in their own image and likeness.

Let's rewind a bit further. Why were people dissatisfied with the Mass of Pius V? The laity felt disconnected from the mass. There were lots of abuses. The most common mass was a low mass, without music and most of the fanfare that fans of the Mass of Pius V like today.

It was common for priests to try to rush through the mass - I have heard people say that most masses they went to were 20 minutes long. In order to get through the whole liturgy in 20 minutes, the Priest would have to be mumbling quickly in Latin. There wasn't as much call-and-response like there is in the new mass. The experience of many Catholics was: go to Church, pray quietly while listening to a priest mutter to himself for 20 minutes, sometimes receive communion, and walk out.

High masses were glorious time commitments, low masses were checking off a cosmic checklist. Good and holy priests would have good and holy low masses. But there were many priests who did not fill this category, and many priests who felt like there was no point in enunciating a mass spoken in Latin to God instead of in the vernacular to the Congregation.

What was the new mass, the Mass of Paul VI, supposed to look like? Done according to the rubrics, it looks like this. According to the Vatican II document discussing the Liturgy, Sacrosantum Concilium, Latin was still supposed to be given "Pride of Place." Here is how the actual council of Vatican II wanted things to develop:

  • Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.
  • Sacred scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy. For it is from scripture that lessons are read and explained in the homily, and psalms are sung; the prayers, collects, and liturgical songs are scriptural in their inspiration and their force, and it is from the scriptures that actions and signs derive their meaning.
  • It is to be stressed that whenever rites, according to their specific nature, make provision for communal celebration involving the presence and active participation of the faithful, this way of celebrating them is to be preferred, so far as possible, to a celebration that is individual and quasi-private.

-The sermon, moreover, should draw its content mainly from scriptural and liturgical sources, and its character should be that of a proclamation of God's wonderful works in the history of salvation

  • the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites... But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants, according to the regulations on this matter to be laid down separately in subsequent chapters.

-The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action

At no point do I see anything recommending deploying clowns.

And so it goes for the other Vatican II documents. Individual Catholics took minor developments in a certain direction (often a return to traditions and increased emphasis on teachings from earlier in Church History) and decided to make a complete rupture.

I focused a lot on the Liturgical side to this, but I could make similar write ups on what Vatican II teaches on interpretation of scripture, No Salvation Outside the Church, etc.

I have never had any trouble finding good parishes that mostly abide by the rubrics. Even so, I have noticed an increase in chant and Latin. Parishes have started doing the entrance antiphon - I never heard this as a kid. Our parish has two first-year priests, they seem a lot less gay and more knowledgeable than the older priests. There is a major vibe shift going on.

Ah, but like most Vatican II documents, Sacrosantum Concilium contains a poison pill clause.

D) Norms for adapting the Liturgy to the culture and traditions of peoples

37, Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples' way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit.

And thus we end up with a double digit percentage of Catholic masses in South Louisiana on amy given Autumn Sunday morning involving prayers for the literal New Orleans Saints football team. After all, NFL football is indeed important to the peoples of South Louisiana. And how can one object that the “New Orleans Saints” do not harmonize with the true and authentic spirit of the liturgy? They are named for saints after all.

I disagree that it's a poison pill clause. It's a significant part of why the vast majority of the Cardinals present signed off on Sacrosantum Concilium. They wanted a globalized Latin rite.

Let's say the church wants to expand in a culture where showing the soles of your feet is considered horribly rude (like half the world). Even if it doesn't make it into an official document, you can imagine that in those regions, people would be careful to not show the soles of their feet at Mass. They might kick other people out for doing so.

The priest might modify the liturgy in places where they would typically have to show the soles of their feet, for example during Eucharistic Adoration they might not kneel with their back to the congregation. People might not kneel at all but adopt other postures of reverence. Churches may come up with feet hiding devices, like an altar rail for legs.

All this is to say, there are legitimate reasons why "rigid uniformity" can be bad - if you're expanding to actually different cultures and peoples.

The problem with the football example is that it's not actually rude to neglect the morning football prayer. It's not a requirement of the society. They're just normal Westeners, mixing the sacred with the banal.

Churches may come up with feet hiding devices

It's called a (non-French style)cassock.

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