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