Second Vatican Council Quotes

From such an extravegent summary, we can draw only one conclusion: either we must condemn the Second Vatican Council which authorized it, or we must condemn the Council of Trent and all the Popes who, since the sixteenth century, have declared Protestantism heretical and schismatic.

Dialogue That Seeks Truth   Among the many profound teachings we have been blessed with from the Second Vatican Council, there is one that is particularly profound—though it was not really so much an individual teaching as a theme. That theme could be summed up by the word “dialogue.

The Second Vatican Council, much influenced by Newman’s thinking, spoke of the assent of the mind and will to Catholic doctrine, even if all dimensions of a doctrine are not understood. Without such assent, we try to meet God on our terms rather than His. This is futile at best and spiritually destructive at worst.

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

After Pope John Paul II permitted limited use of the Latin-only Tridentine Mass, which was banned by the Second Vatican Council, the elder Bannons became Tridentine Catholics. “When [the Roman Catholic Church] first started allowing it in the mid-eighties,” Steve Bannon recalled, “we left our parish that we’d been in for years and went and joined St. Joseph’s in Richmond, which offers a Tridentine Mass.

It is this kind of consciousness, exacerbated to an extreme, which has made inevitable the so called "death of God." Cartesian thought began with an attempt to reach God as object by starting from the thinking self. But when God becomes object, he sooner or later "dies," because God as object is ultimately unthinkable. God as object is not only a mere abstract concept, but one which contains so many internal contradictions that it becomes entirely nonnegotiable except when it is hardened into an idol that is maintained in existence by a sheer act of will. For a long time man continued to be capable of this willfulness: but now the effort has become exhausting and many Christians have realised it to be futile. Relaxing the effort, they have let go the "God-object" which their fathers and grandfathers still hoped to manipulate for their own ends. Their weariness has accounted for the element of resentment which made this a conscious "murder" of the deity. Liberated from the strain of willfully maintaining an object-God in existence, the Cartesian consciousness remains none the less imprisoned in itself. Hence the need to break out of itself and to meet "the other" in "encounter," "openness," "fellowship," "communion".

Priesthood, Ratzinger stressed, meant getting out of a bourgeois lifestyle. It had to ‘guide people towards becoming reconciled, forgiving and forgetting, being tolerant and generous’. It was to help them ‘put up with other people in their otherness, and have patience with one another’. A priest must ‘above all, be able to support people in pain – in bodily suffering, as well as in all the disappointments, humiliations and fears, which no one is spared.’ For ‘the ability to accept and stand suffering’ is ‘a fundamental condition for successful human living. If that is not learned, then failure is inevitable.’16 The ‘right definition of what a priest should be and do’ was still Paul’s message in his letter to the Corinthians: ‘We are ambassadors for Christ.’ A priest is required ‘to know Jesus intimately; he has met him and learned to love him’. It was only by being a man of prayer that he was also a truly ‘spiritual’ person – a priest. When priests were overworked and felt tired and frustrated, it was often caused by a tense straining for performance. Then faith became a heavy burden, ‘when it should be wings to carry us’. Whoever works for Christ knows that ‘it is always someone else who sows and someone else who reaps. He does not have to continually question himself; he leaves the outcome to the Lord and does what he can without worrying, freely and happily, secure as part of the whole.’17

What difference does it make if the bread and wine turn into the Body and Blood of Christ and we don't?

from a Second Vatican Council document: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man find true light.

from a Second Vatican Council document: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man find true light.”4

Introduction THE TRUTH of the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time has proved to be difficult for many Catholics to relate to. It is an area of theology that many find irrelevant to their everyday lives; something perhaps best left to the placard-wielding doom merchants. However, the clarity of this teaching is to be found throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture, through the Tradition of the Church Fathers, notably St. Augustine and St. Irenaeus, and in the Magisterium of the popes. A possible reason for this attitude of incredulity is the obvious horror at the prospect of the end of the world. In envisioning this end, the focus of many consists of an image of universal conflagration where the only peace is the peace of death, not only for man but the physical world also. But is that scenario one that is true to the plans of Divine Providence as revealed by Jesus? In truth it is not. It is a partial account of the wondrous work that the Lord will complete on the last day. The destiny of humanity and all creation at the end of time will consist of the complete renewal of the world and the universe, in which the Kingdom of God will come. Earth will become Heaven and the Holy Trinity will dwell with the community of the redeemed in an endless day illuminated by the light that is God—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I suspect that the ignorance of many stems from the lack of clear teaching coming from the clergy. There is no real reason for confusion in this area as the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium, and the Catholic Catechism make the authentic teaching very clear. With the knowledge that the end will give way to a new beginning, the Christian should be filled with hope, not fear, expectation, not apprehension. It is important to stress at this point that it is not my intention to speculate as to specific times and dates, as that knowledge belongs to God the Father himself; rather the intention is to offer the teachings and guidance of the recent popes in this matter, and to show that they are warning of the approaching Second Coming of the Lord. Pope Pius XII stated in his Easter Message of 1957: “Come, Lord Jesus. There are numerous signs that Thy return is not far off.” St. Peter warns us that “everything will soon come to an end” (1 Pet. 4:7), while at the same time exercising caution: “But there is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with the Lord, a “day” can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8). So let us leave the time scale open, that way controversy can be avoided and the words of the popes will speak for themselves.

When John XXIII solemnly opened the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, he said, “The Bride of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy rather than arm herself with the weapons of rigor.

John XXIII convoked the Second Vatican Council and gave it a pastoral purpose: to change the relationship between the Church and the world, so that the world could come to know its savior and there might be peace among all those whom Christ died to save.

The tragedy of the last fifty years ... is that we have taken a missionary council and domesticated it, introducing the world’s conflicts into the internal life of the Church herself, often therefore paralyzing her so that the mission is, in fact, stymied.... The Second Vatican Council was a missionary council; therefore, it was called not directly to change the Church so that she could catch up with a tortured world but rather, to change that world.

The Vatican preached that because the Jews had killed Jesus and rejected his teachings they were punished with the loss of their Holy Temple and the city of Jerusalem, as well as their homeland. In addition, they were damned to wander the earth forever as a divine warning to anyone who might refuse to obey the Church. (It is important to note that this teaching was categorically rejected and forbidden by the Second Vatican Council in 1962.) Baccio Pontelli, on the other hand, was not

Both Christ and Scripture, says the Second Vatican Council, are given "for the sake of our salvation" (Dei Verbum 11), and both give us God's definitive revelation of himself. We cannot, therefore, conceive of one without the other: the Bible without Jesus, or Jesus without the Bible.

Vatican I, for example, affirms that the Church herself, by reason of her marvelous extension, her eminent holiness, and her inexhaustible fruitfulness in every good thing, as well as by her Catholic unity and invincible stability, is a great and perpetual motive of belief and an irrefutable witness to her own divine mission. In a word, the Catholic Church has been endowed with all the mark necessary to allow any man of good faith to adhere to her as the true Church.

No one claiming to be a Christian would, one hopes, dispute the fact that as individuals we must submit ourselves to the rule of Christ the King, but very few Christians, Catholics included, understand, let alone uphold, the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ. His social kingship can be implemented fully only when Church and state are united. The separation of Church and State was condemned unequivocally by the Roman Pontiffs until the Second Vatican Council. The Church's teaching is that the State has an obligation to render public worship to God in accord with the liturgy of the true Church, the Catholic Church, to uphold its teachings, and to aid the Church in the carrying out of her functions. The State does not have the right to remain neutral regarding religion, much less to pursue a secular approach in its policies. A secular approach is by that very fact an anti-God and an anti-Christ apprach.

What Pope Benedict XVI failed to specify in 2013 is that the main media outlet responsible for the hijacking of the Second Vatican Council was Time magazine, which acted as the middleman between the CIA (C. D. Jackson was the intermediary employed by both institutions) and double agents like John Courtney Murray, S.J. To this day no one has explored the extent to which this realization led to Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation. The one thing we know for certain is that the resignation precipitated Bergoglio’s election as pope. The connection is more than post hoc.

In his autobiography Clerical Error, Kaiser explains that he left the order before ordination because he felt that he could better implement the Jesuits’ goals by working directly for the CIA as Time magazine’s Rome correspondent during the Second Vatican Council. During the soirees he hosted at his posh Rome apartment on Time’s lavish expense account, Kaiser met Malachi Martin, another Jesuit who had also become a double agent. Martin was being paid by both B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee to subvert the Catholic claim that the Jews had killed Christ.

I participated in several other meetings with my brother bishops and I asked several of them, once the documents were approved, “Have you read the final document?” And some of them answered me, “Sincerely, no.” One of these meetings lasted one week and produced a document, which, at least in our region, no one has read. Later we got the financial report for this meeting. The meeting cost $250,000 from church funds. Imagine! Basically, it was $250,000 thrown to the wind. Really, to the wind. We had minimal time for prayer. Is this the “Church of the poor,” which was so stressed during the Second Vatican Council and afterwards? The continuous meetings and assemblies of bishops: they are spending so much money, it’s incredible. If we would reduce drastically the frequency of these meetings, we could give millions of dollars every year to the poor around the world. To me, this is a sin that churchmen are committing today.

First and Second Vatican Councils (Cf.  Donovan).

He killed our God!” That indictment, first brought as an explicit charge of deicide as early as the second century by a bishop, Melito of Sardis,14 was officially quashed by the bishops of the Second Vatican Council in 1965,15 yet it remains the ground of all Jew hatred. That, at bottom, is why it is inconceivable that any Jew should look with equanimity on a cross at Auschwitz, and why no Christian should be able to behold it there as anything but a blow to conscience. “Though there were other social and economic conditions which were necessary before the theological antecedents of antisemitism could be turned into the death camps of our times,” the Jewish theologian Richard Rubenstein has written, “only the terrible accusation, known and taught to every Christian in earliest childhood, that the Jews are the killers of the Christ can account for the depth and persistence of this supreme hatred.

Also noteworthy are the number of enemies of Heaven, as they are revealed by their blasphemies against the Immaculate. In addition to the millions of atheists, agnostics, unchurched, and assorted infidels and pagans, Our Lord includes Orthodox schismatics and the Protestant sects who deny the Immaculate Conception. To be honest, one must also include a large number of Catholics, particularly since the Second Vatican Council, where Mary was explicitly denied Her proper title, "Mediatrix of All Graces", so as not to offend all the other blasphemers.

It is clear that God had chosen one people to prepare for the coming of the Messiah and the time having come, the Messiah, prepared for by the prophets, was rejected by His own people, who even crucified Him. It is clear that we, the Christians, are heirs to what the prophets announced and to what our Lord Jesus Christ has brought. We have the faith of Abraham. He is really our father, We have the same faith: Abraham believed in the future Redeemer, we believe in the same Redeemer who has come: the same Redeemer, the same faith.

As for Paul's famous remark about "the smoke of Satan", no less a journalist than Vittorio Missori has suggested that Paul lifted these words from the Third Secret of Fatima. Whether this is true or not, it cannot credibly be denied that demonic forces had not only infiltrated the Church, but were doing much of the lever pulling. What else could account for the thorough divergence from orthodoxy that seized the entire Church from 1960 and particularly after the Second Vatican Council? Something that looked a lot like apostacy was winnowing the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

That ‘requires from you serenity of mind, fraternal harmony, moderation in proposals, dignity in discussion and sound advice’. John XXIII ended his speech with an

Unlike with all the previous Councils, this time there was ‘no particular problem to solve’. In a way, it was about the whole thing. ‘Christianity, which had built and shaped the West, seemed increasingly to be losing its defining power’, Joseph Ratzinger thought, as he witnessed the historic moment. ‘It seemed to have grown tired, and the future seemed to be determined by other spiritual forces.’5 It had to catch up with ‘the world of today so that it can again have power to shape tomorrow’.6 Pope John’s word aggiornamento – ‘updating’ – had mobilized a new energy. Everything should become fresher, newer, more vivid. But wasn’t it also clear that the Roman Curia with all its power – and all its guile – would undermine any attempt at reform? Didn’t the prepared schemata bear the stamp, in content, style and mentality, of precisely that Roman neo-scholastic theology which needed to be overcome? Yes, the entry into St Peter’s was impressive. But, Ratzinger wondered outside in the Square, ‘Is it normal that 2,500 bishops, not to mention the many other

Pope Benedict XVI: Let us pay homage to the evangelical wisdom with which my beloved predecessor was able tomguide the Church during and after the Second Vatican Council. With prophetic intuition he perceoved the hopes and anxieties of the people at that time; he strove to make the most of the positive experiences, seeking to illuminate them with the light of the truth and love of Christ, the one redeemer of humanity.

Pope Benedict XVI on Pope St Paul VI: Let us pay homage to the spirit of evangelical wisdom with which my beloved predecessor was able to guide the Church during and after the Second Vatican Council. With prophetic intuition he perceived the hopes and anxieties or the people at that time; he strove to make the most of the positive experiences, seeking to illuminate them with the light of truth and the love of Christ.

Ratzinger took from his professor: unhampered access to current topics; new approaches informed by the liturgical movement; historical-critical investigation of tradition; sympathy for the philosophical-theological ‘Nouvelle Théologie’; the ecumenical impulse; a passion for clear formulation of your own thinking, even if it was deviant, as the precondition for genuine dialogue.

According to the Catholic convert Scheler, people today fled from God because they fled from themselves. So being concerned with religion was not about self-sacrifice or any other loss. Quite the opposite: ‘You gain yourself as a person by losing yourself in God.’ Scheler was convinced that only Christian Socialism was capable of finding a way between the capitalist West and the communist East. In his philosophical anthropology, he stressed the special nature of humankind as ‘co-operator with God’.

While the Second Vatican Council calls everyone to return to ‘the source’, we must admit that we have not discovered fasting but, instead, the opposite has happened. In the past decades, fasting has been reduced to the least possible measure – to two days a year: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Catholicism’s greatest concern regarding the poor in the sixties was the issue of fertile ground that could give rise to any kind of ideology.  This could detract from what the Church asked of the Second Vatican Council and has maintained ever since; to espouse the right path in responding to an absolutely inescapable demand, one that is central, such as concern from the poor, and which, in my view, appears fully formed in the bishop’s conference in Aparecida….[Yes,] there were missteps.  But there were also thousands of pastors, be they priests, religious men or women, young, adult or old laypeople, who committed themselves to the Church and are the honor of our work, the source of our joy…It’s a matter of concerning oneself not with partisan politics, but with the great politics born of the commandments and the Gospel.

Was Pius X, a canonized saint, entirely wrong about Modernism? Was the First Vatican Council wrong to denounce the trend? If a Roman pontiff and an ecumenical council could be wrong a century ago, how can Catholics be confident that another pope and another ecumenical council are right today? Yet that is precisely the message that Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga delivered to an audience in Dallas in 2013. The Honduran cardinal, the chairman of the pope’s top advisory board, said that the Second Vatican Council had been convened to “end the hostilities between the Church and Modernism, which was condemned in the First Vatican Council.” Lest anyone miss the message, he added, “Modernism was, most of the time, a reaction against injustices and abuses that disparaged the dignity and the rights of the person.

All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity. ... In order to reach this perfection the faithful should use the strength dealt out to them by Christ's gift, so that ... doing the will of the Father in everything, they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and to the service of their neighbor.

[O]ften men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator. […] By the proclamation of the Gospel… [the Church] gives [non-Christians] the dispositions necessary for baptism, snatches them from the slavery of error and of idols and incorporates them in Christ…

Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, [this Council] teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.

The Illuminati sects operating in the occult and sexual magick circles unite people ranging from the ex-terrorist to the fundamentalist Catholic; ready to manipulate sects, new religions, state secrets, and anything else they can get their hands on for profit or power. The big players, the Vatican on one side; and the Jewish lobby on the other, play a daily game of chess with the destiny of all of humanity. Although, according to some, the game has already been won during the Second Vatican Council by the Zionists…

This is not all. Together with the absurdity proper to democratizing the marriage rite and imposing it on all, there is an inconsistency in Catholic doctrine when it claims that the rite, as well as being indissoluble, renders natural unions “sacred”—which represents one incongruence associating with another. Through precise, dogmatic premises, the “sacred” is here reduced to a mere manner of speech. It is well known that Christian and Catholic attitudes are characterized by the antithesis between “flesh” and spirit, by a theological hatred for sex, due to the illegitimate extension to ordinary life of a principle valid at best for a certain type of ascetic life. With sex being presented as something sinful, marriage has been conceived as a lesser evil, a concession to human weakness for those who cannot choose chastity as a way of life, and renounce sex. Not being able to ban sexuality altogether, Catholicism has tried to reduce it to a mere biological fact, allowing its use in marriage only for procreation. Unlike certain ancient traditions, Catholicism has recognized no higher value, not even a potential one, in the sexual experience taken in itself. There is lacking any basis for its transformation in the interests of a more intense life, to integrate and elevate the inner tension of two beings of different sexes, whereas it is in exactly these terms that one should conceive of a concrete “sacralization” of the union and the effect of a higher influence involved in the rite. On the other hand, since the marriage rite has been democratized, the situation could not be otherwise even if the premises were different; otherwise, it would be necessary to suppose an almost magical power in the rite to automatically elevate the sexual experiences of any couple to the level of a higher tension, of a transforming intoxication that alone could lift it beyond the “natural” plane. The sexual act would constitute the primary element, whereas procreation would appear absolutely secondary and belonging to the naturalistic plane. As a whole, whether through its conception of sexuality, or through its profanation of the marriage rite as something put in everyone’s reach and even rendered obligatory for any Catholic couple, religious marriage itself is reduced to the mere religious sanction of a profane, unbreakable contract. Thus the Catholic precepts about the relations between the sexes reduce everything to the plane of a restrained, bourgeois mediocrity: tamed, procreative animality within conformist limits that have not been fundamentally changed by certain hesitant, fringe concessions made for the sake of “updating” at the Second Vatican Council.

Might we follow the prompts of Lumen Gentium, one of the most striking of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and speak of the possibility that non-Christians, even nonbelievers, across the ages, can be saved? If they are, Lumen Gentium argues, they are saved through some participation in the grace of Christ, some light that comes from Jesus, though they might not be aware of it. In the case of nonbelievers, it would happen through following, honestly and courageously, the dictates of the conscience, which John Henry Newman helpfully described as the “aboriginal Vicar of Christ” in the soul. The great English master was anticipating the teaching of Vatican II by insisting that the voice of conscience is, in point of fact, the voice of Christ, though anonymously so.