Dutch bishops: Church is collapsing - Pope: Vatican II is only 1/2 Done

Photo ~ A painting is removed from a former Eindhoven Catholic church sold to the city and being turned into a library and cultural centre. Photo taken 20 March 2012/Tom Heneghan)

Cardinal Willem Eijk, head of the Dutch bishops’ conference, said that the bishops’ 90-minute meeting with the pope had examined the Dutch Church’s decline and the effects of the scandals that first came to light in 2010. Tens of thousands of children were abused by priests over decades, according to an independent inquiry, and the Church has apologized and begun paying large sums in damages.

More than 23,000 Catholics quit the Dutch Church in 2010, the peak of an exodus in which an average 18,000 have left each year since 2006. This year, however, only about 7,500 had left by October.

The pope emphasized “the importance of encouraging the faithful to seize opportunities for dialogue..."

In mentioning the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, Bishop Jan Hendricks said the pope cited specifically Lumen Gentium, the council’s dogmatic constitution on the church.

“His first thought was of the church,” Hendriks said. “That means he thinks the reform of the church is only half-way done, that is clear.”

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Dr Bobus

Dec 9, 2013

So 50 years after Vat II closed, it is only 50% implemented.
Calling Dr Howard . . . Dr Fine . . . Dr HowardMore

So 50 years after Vat II closed, it is only 50% implemented.

Calling Dr Howard . . . Dr Fine . . . Dr Howard

Prof. Leonard Wessell

Dec 9, 2013

The title of this piece realizes a contrast. The meaning is clear enough. I wonder, however, if two other interpretations are possible. 1. The Church is, indeed, collapsing BECAUSE Vat II is only 1/2 realized. If fully realized, there would have been no collapse. From this point of view, those who retarded the realization of Vat II in its modernizing fullness are responsible, indeed, gulity for the collapse. The Pope, a knight in populous armour, arriving at the scene just in time to save all. 2. The collapse is not even noticable, the "spiritual instinct" of the pope so full of "feeling with the Church" that all else slides past him.

Actually, I have just described two possiblities of what I think together is behind the pope's seeming indifference. I am suggesting that the man is so caught up in his "feeling religiosity" that nothing else enters into his consciousness (unless it be Franciscans praying in Latin). Within this context the collapse is indeed for him an implicit function of the slowness of previous popes to put FULLY into effect the modernist "Spirit of Vat II". My opinion here, though wildly speculative, finds its origins in the pope's continual blabbing about "feeling" and emotionality. This see there an idée fixe. I must admit, as a philoopher, the logic of emotionality is alien to me.