Dear Mr. Shea,
In today's “Word of Encouragement” email, you talk about people who want to repeal Vatican II. My husband and I are young traditional Catholics who only worship at the Traditional Latin Mass. We don't know anyone who wants to “repeal” Vatican II. We simply ignore it because it is a modernist error engineered by Freemasons.
Since Vatican II, the male-only priesthood has been questioned by feminists and others, Catholics have contracepted and sterilized themselves (some have even aborted their children), some nuns stop wearing the habit (and these nuns usually belong to the orders with few or no novices), less Catholics believe in the Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, immodesty during Mass, and more. At the parish we belong to, there are many families — the church is almost full at every Sunday Mass — and almost all the families have at least four children. As our late Holy Father said many times, youth are the future of the Church. Please be more respectful to young Catholics who are doing things the way things have been done for hundreds of years — the Traditional Latin Mass, daily rosary, and so much more.
Have a good day; God bless you.
My Mother My Confidence,
Corinne
Dear Corinne,
“We simply ignore it because it is a modernist error engineered by Freemasons.”
I rest my case.
The rest of your argument consists of one massive post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. It would have been just as sound to argue that the massive number of episcopal defections to Arianism and semi-Arianism, the persecution of Athanasius and the apostasy of Julian was “caused” by the Council of Nicaea. (“It's been 40 years since the Council and now what have we got? A pagan emperor on the throne and an episcopacy that compromises on the very foundation of our Faith: the deity of Jesus!”)
None of the good things you mention your parish is doing are contrary to the teaching of the Council. They are part of what the Council calls for and desires. And to invoke John Paul II — a Pope who endlessly appealed to the teaching of Vatican II — against the Council is simply crazy, as is the conspiratorial account of the Council as a modernist plot. I urge you: familiarize yourself with the actual teaching of the Council. Don't buy the dissenting line of either the reactionary or the progressive dissenter. Your practice is, from your description, quite Catholic. But you've somehow convinced yourself that to do these things is “contrary to Vatican II.” It's not. That's because Vatican II has no beef with opposition to contraception and abortion, reverent worship of the Christ who is fully present in the Eucharist, and large families. On the contrary, it promotes all these things. It is a mark of the devil's success in sowing confusion that he has persuaded so many conservative Christians that to seek such things is to “ignore” the Council, when it is, in fact, to fulfill the Council's wishes.
God bless you as you seek the truth as it is taught by the Living Magisterium of Holy Church.
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
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