The Church Was Already Rotten Before The Council - Father Weinandy Sharply Contradicts John XXIII
A critic of Francis, Weinandy doesn't deny the huge damage done to the Church in the last decades (InsideTheVatican.com, July 27).
However, for him it's naïve to think that so many priests and faithful were people of deep faith, and then, overnight, were corrupted by the Council and its spirit, and left.
Therefore, he argues that the Council only provided the occasion for the already existing difficulties to come to light, "they were already there, deeply embedded within the Church, prior to the Council.”
Weinandy's thesis sharply contradicts John XXIII who admitted in his Opening Speech for Vatican II (October 11, 1962) that there was no lack of false doctrines, opinions, or dangerous concepts, but then explained that "these things so openly conflict with the right norms of honesty, and have borne such lethal fruits that today people by themselves seem to begin to condemn them and in particular those forms of life which disregard God and his laws, excessive confidence in technological progress, and a prosperity consisting only in the comforts of life."
In the same speech John XXIII insisted that "We must quite disagree with these prophets of doom who are always forecasting disaster, as if the end of the world were at hand." In this speech there is not the slightest confirmation of what Weinandy says about this time - on the contrary.
Weinandy is right when he observes that the bishops have until recently refused to acknowledge the gravity of the situation pretending that affairs within the Church were really not that bad and blaming only “a few vocal extremists” who think otherwise.
For him, it was the media’s abuse hoax, that forced bishops to admit the crisis - while, in reality, abuse cases are a side issue, welcomed by the bishops to distract from the real problems.
Weinandy admits that “some bits and pieces" of the Vatican II teachings "may need revision” but he believes that the Pastoral Council has borne authentic fruit that “is yet to come to full maturity." This is a myth that has been repeated now for decades and, still, nobody has a clue about what this "fruit" could be.
According to Weinandy, Vatican II enabled the election of John Paul II - whom he considers as some kind of a genius although he presided over 30 years of an unprecedented ecclesiastical downfall - the [protestant-leaning] Charismatic renewal and the foundation of blossoming new orders and renewal movements who, one by one, must disavow their corrupt founder.
He also believes that there is a "renewal" of theology, based more on Scripture, the Church Fathers and Church Doctors, with promising [and marginalised] theologians. Yet it is also a fact that such a theology, if it exists, has no audience, because the average Catholic lacks elementary knowledge of the Faith while, since the Council, a majority of the seminarians is kept on a very modest intellectual level.
