
Vatican
II:
The Model of a Failed
Corporation
Imagine a corporation that is very large; indeed, has
many thousands of managers and employees, and what is more, more than
a billion customers. The corporation has prospered for 2000 years with
the business model it had developed and which had been rigorously maintained
by a succession of over 200 presidents and many more board members.
The customers have been satisfied and in no way found the business wanting
in the way of customer service and business policy.
A new president is
then elected — and without any compelling warrant or reason, decides
to change the business model dramatically. The managers and the employees
are told — despite any evidence — that the business is wanting and could
prosper more, even though it is at the apex of any competing businesses
by several magnitudes of order. Business had been good, the customers
happy, and the employees as well, but he and a handful of likeminded
board members wished to change not only the model, but the erstwhile
universally admired architecture of its thousands of stores throughout
the world, as well as dramatically simplifying the interiors to more
accord with its less successful competitors ? and what is more, totally
changed the business language itself ? so that these formerly unifying
features were to be discarded in favor of disunity. Once again, it must
be emphasized, there was no compelling reason to make such drastic changes
to a remarkably successful corporation.
The model is changed
according these new principles that differ greatly from the former.
Decline Hailed as
Growth
Within a few years,
this once monolithic business, viewed as a paradigm of success in its
area of competence, then loses tens of thousands of employees and managers
and — most importantly — the customer base, once in the area of 75%
repeat business became 40%, and in a few more years less than 25%.
Remarkably, the new
president — and his successors — hail the change as a success, despite
metrics in every area that show it in decline — indeed, almost
in receivership! The stores close by the thousands, or are consolidated
in an effort to stop the hemorrhaging of customers.
Then, in the middle
of this disastrous downward spiral, the corporation is hit, in successive
years, with over $3 Billion dollars of loss in the way of lawsuits due
to negligent hiring practices, practices that resulted in employees
being charged with large-scale and sordid misconduct — misconduct of
the vilest sort — together with the incessant litigation that followed.
Shall the customers pay for the company’s negligence — or rather, pay
the lawyers and the victims for the negligence of the managers? The
corporation, as a consequence, must sell off large portions of its portfolio
and close many, many of its stores. The customers are fewer and fewer,
and what is more, there are no new and trustworthy employees to be had
as a result of the magnitude of the scandal. The schools of management
(Seminaries) must, of course, close also, for there are
no more candidates (seminarians) for the positions which themselves
are fewer and fewer.
Despite this, the
Chairman (in the case of the Catholic Church, pope Francis) and the
Board (the bishops and cardinals) are determined more than ever — not
to return to the successful and prosperous method of the last 2000 years
(the Tridentine or Latin Mass that preceded Vatican II for two millennia)
but to continue in its new business model which is crumbling daily with
still further departures from the past, and is itself becoming increasingly
arthritic,together with its remaining customers.
What do you see in
all this? What is your assessment of its management and its future as
a viable business? The question, of course, is rhetorical, except for
a doctrinaire few who maintain that — despite all appearances and metrics
— it is actually prospering in its manifest decline.
Receivership
This is a vignette
of the state of the “modern” Catholic Church in receivership subsequent
to Vatican II. It is the state of the Church today. And many increasingly
wonder if it is the same Church at all — given the changes that followed
— and still follow — that ill-fated Council that effectively defected
from the Faith and went the Way of the World.
Counterfeit: another religion altogether?
What is euphemized
as “The Conciliar Church of Vatican II” and “The Post-Conciliar
Church” or the “Novus Ordo (New Order) Church” is, in fact,
largely a vast network of homosexuals and pedophiles at all levels
— an imposter-church, a meretricious simulacrum; indeed, it well may
be another religion altogether; a religion distinct from, and not identical
to, nor in continuity with, the Holy Catholic Church that preceded it
for 2000 years.
“Hermeneutics of Continuity?”
“Hermeneutics”
is primarily textual in nature, dealing with Scriptural interpretation,
and presently, methods of interpretation in general. It was Benedict,
however, who coined the phrase “Hermeneutic of Continuity” in
December 2005 and applied it to the failed effort to demonstrate that
the Church prior to Vatican II is effectively the same
Church that emerged from that unfortunate Council — however great the
disparity between the two. It has, since, become the shibboleth
of “acceptable” or “correct” theological discourse.
Balkanization of the Church
Amid
the great confusion surrounding this novel concept, perhaps the greatest
is its presuming to provide an “interpretation” of something
present, not simply through what preceded it, but from
which it significantly differs. Indeed, precisely as a result of what
is experienced as discontinuity it has arguably culminated in a crisis
of identity. The notion of Vatican II as an “organic development” has
become increasingly difficult to sustain given the undeniably profound
changes that occurred within the Church and which still occur unabated.
These changes have, in turn, resulted in a balkanization of the Church
into conflicting and irreconcilable factions within it, much as had
inevitably occurred within Protestantism. Far from a “hermeneutic
of continuity,” what we now confront is not an evolution so much
as it is a mutation., a fundamental change in the Churches’ understanding
of itself, its mission and its relevance. What is more, we must ask,
since when did the Church need an interpretation of itself?
Is this even a meaningful question?
Of
the many problems plaguing the Church (to say nothing of other learned
institutions) is its penchant for literal and verbal complexity
and ambiguity; the saying of something that sounds profound —
such as a “hermeneutic of continuity” — but in the end is without
substance. It possesses a sense of impenetrable density; something
opaque to immediate understanding or comprehension, an aura of meaning,
but is ultimately empty of it. It appears to have gavitas,
but is found wanting. It conceals itself as a cypher, something
written in secret code that only the “initiated” — those who have the
“cognitive superiority,” the “necessary intelligence” — unlike you
— can grasp.
We
then come to understand the purpose of obfuscation: if a statement
cannot be understood, how can it be attacked? What is
cleverer, if attacked, it deflects the attack by indicting the attacker,
specifically his supposed lack of understanding or intellectual perspicacity.
The
attempt to reconcile the nouveau “Conciliar Church” with all
that had preceded it for so many centuries has consistently failed.
Why? Because There is no “Hermeneutic of Continuity” — and no
“Hermeneutic of Rupture.” The entire notion of a “hermeneutic”
at all between Vatican II and the Pre-Conciliar Church
is, for all intents and purposes, a literary device, a bromide that
has the gravitas of a cliche…… instead of acknowledging The “hermeneutic
of continuity” — a deliberately obscure phrase that is totally
opaque to the ordinary Catholic who is neither a Scriptural scholar,
a theologian, nor a philosopher, came into being with Benedict XVI in
an effort to save Vatican II from the humiliation it deserves.
In essence, it refers to the proposition
that — despite all compelling and verifiable indications that it had,
in fact, changed, and had changed significantly — the Church of Pope
Pius XII (and all 259 of his predecessors for 2000 years) and that of
Francis … are identical. In fact prior to the pre-Conciliar and the
Conciliar Church of Vatican II effectively, nothing, or
very little, changed in the Church following Vatican II — despite
all indications that it had. The pre-Vatican Church from time immemorial
is identical to the post-Vatican II Church. through a hermeneutic
— an interpretation — of continuity. Continuity can be found through
an “interpretation” of continuity rather than an interpretation of rupture.
There are, then, two competing narratives, and both lay claim to. That
V2 was a “reaffirmation of all that went before, only cast in new language”
… and new liturgy, and new discipline, and new language (vernacular),
new altar versus populum, freedom to worship in false religions, Sacraments,
and … This is patently false.
Children’s parents and grandparents: tell the children of something
which once was unspeakably beautiful — and manifestly holy.
And pray that it will be so again.
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
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editor@boston-catholic-journal.com

Totally Faithful to the
Sacred
Deposit of Faith
entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti verbum
Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power, and
yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My Name.”
(Apocalypse
3.8)
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