Was Vatican II a Failure?

Friends, we just marked the 60th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II, the Second Vatican Council. Six decades later, can we say the Council was a success? A failure? Something in between?

On today’s episode of “The Word on Fire Show,” Brandon Vogt discuss a provocative pair of op-eds published in the New York Times by Ross Douthat, who argues that the Council was both necessary and a failure, and yet cannot be undone.

A listener asks, if God is without form, then at the Transfiguration, what was Jesus transformed into?

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[moursundjames]

I'm 28. I became a Catholic when I was 22 (grew up Episcopalian). I never new Catholicism before Vatican II, but I am enthralled by the beauty and solemness of the Tridentine Mass. I sense that many other young Catholics feel the same way.

[b.melakail]

As a late 20s cradle Catholic in South Africa, I wouldn't look at Africa as a positive simply because of numbers. The church is becoming a product of the era. Allow the TLM to live freely alongside the Novus Ordo

[wendyfield]

I am 88. I lived and worked in Rome during the Council, and in the late 1960’s worked as a translator in the Vatican. I think the decisions have largely not been implemented as intended, and this rests largely on the shoulders of some bishops not being courageous and firm enough, and many priests not studying the documents enough. +

[Martin_e_]

Why does the Pope put so much emphasis on suppressing the Tridentine Mass? I don't understand. Wouldn't it be more logical to allow both forms of the mass and for Catholics to choose which one brings us closer to the Church?

[JackGordone]

Was it a failure? Judge for yourself by the subsequent metrics. EVERY index, the number of faithful, of religious, of seminarians, parishes, marriages, baptisms, etc., every one save the number of permanent deacons, has precipitously declined, plummeted in fact. If the word 'failure' has any meaning at all, Vatican Council II was a catastrophic failure. I'm 80 years old, a Catholic since birth, and all I see around me is spiritual decay, confusion, outright heresy, and division. So, yes, it was an ill-conceived, massive failure.

[michaelmozart]

Vatican II: "Lets change the Mass so that more people come!" How did that work out?

[TrixieCalhoun]

I'm 56, and my older sister and I attended Catholic school (a small school, K-8). During a discussion, we both agreed that neither of us learned anything about our faith. I don't even remember being taught how to go through the Bible. My knowledge has come from my searching and reading and finding informative videos such as Word on Fire. I would often hear others say, "Oh, you were born after Vatican II." This comment seemed to me as if they were saying that I wasn't educated properly in the faith. I didn't even know how to pray a rosary. I asked a close friend in my early 20's. It was embarrassing. Seriously, where did the ball get dropped?

[sithersproductions]

If Vatican II was a success we woudn't even be asking the question of whether it was a failure or not

[justinreany]

"By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?" (Matt 7:16)

[brianmelville]

As a Catholic, I particularly have nothing against the Second Vatican Council. I really don't know much about it. I just love Jesus Christ and concentrate a lot on staying on track.

[JackFalltrades]

Instead of examining the zeitgeist through the lens of Catholic teaching, the Church is doing the opposite.

[JackFalltrades]

"Look at the votes, " but did the Council Fathers know what they were signing up for?
The implementation turned out to be far more radical than the changes the documents mandated.

[joeycarter]

I attended the Novus Ordo modern Catholic Church for 25 years, to help my wife raise our kids Catholic. I never converted to Catholicism. The services were light & almost silly, the priests told jokes, the music "ministry" was pop & amateurish, the deacons held communion, girl alter-servers, etc. Once I tried the Latin Traditional Mass, I saw something that was reverent, spiritual, & serious. Just what I needed. I'm in the process of converting now....but not for the Novus Ordo. It's an embarrassment.

[sonofphilip]

I'm a new Catholic and I was certainly drawn in by the Latin mass. The younger generation that has any interest in converting is yearning for what they lacked: tradition, heritage, stalwart leadership in faith, and an general agnosticism towards the spirit of the age. We were raised in a secular, atheistic culture that robbed us of the sacred and we want it back. Although I don't understand fully all the implications of Vatican II, I know that the mass as it stands has some challenges for younger converts like me. The aesthetics are often not austere, not holy. We want to worship God and we want to enter a holy space where we can leave the world behind to focus of the mass and the prayers of the church. For us, that does mean a certain nod to the past, not the past of the 1960's but the long past, the eternal. Guitar strumming and cajon beat boxes will never invoke this for us. Maybe for our parents it makes them feel more close to the mass, but for us and for any generations after, it is just corny, and fundamentally secular. I think Brian Holdsworth made this point, if you allow one generation to define the aesthetic, it will ultimately end up outdated and be in constant need of updating. This is what Tradition is supposed to solve. While I think I understand the intention was to bring the mass back down to the laity and allow more opportunities for them to participate and bring their modern lives to the table, this was a big error. What was not understood was just how corrupt the lay culture had become and how manipulated it is now. It is not a real, organic, culture. It is the result of decades of cultural warfare, propaganda, "public relations", and nihilistic deconstruction philosophies. Ethnicity has been replaced by consumer choice. It's would be one thing if, say, a pre-modern Irish folk style was injected into the mass music in Ireland; that was a real culture that still possessed the ability to invoke the sacred. Not to mention, the musical culture (I harp on that because I am in the music ministry) that came in in the 60's was fundamentally rooted in a radical "freedom" movement that cannot coexist within the church. In fact, a reaction to this movement is largely what is bringing new converts in.
I think there is still an opportunity to correct the missteps. Maybe it starts with admitting the short-sightedness and optimism of the 60's, and let's have a collective reality check about where the world is, and more importantly, where our souls really are 60 years later. Hindsight is 20/20 and there's no reason why we can't start steering the church back into a more appropriate synthesis of tradition and participation. If you want to save souls, you have to be honest about the state they are in.

[juliusk]

Why did the church abandon the use of wearing their “religious dress”. As a doctor an order of nuns came to my office regularly. They complained that they didn’t get respect on the street or in stores. That didn’t get a discount in stores 31:01 31:01 anymore. I told them because you’re not wearing your habit anymore. How would people know who you are? Then there wasn’t any interest joining their order any more.

[TheGenoveva]

It was definitely a failure. “By its fruits you shall know them.” It destroyed a lot of families’ faith. I know that more than 80, 000 priests left the priesthood because they refused to celebrate the New Mass. Thank you God for allowing me to revert to the Latin Mass during lockdown. I will never look back.

[ColdWarPrepper]

I'm reading G.K. Chesterton's collected writings right now - "Heretic, Orthodoxy, and The Everlasting Man" Two points - 1. whether in the US, in Germany, or in South Korea when the Priest said Dominus vobis cum, I knew the response was Et cum spiritu tuu. So, I could actively participate in Mass wherever I was stationed. 2. I feel like the focus of attention (adoration) has shifted from the Eucharist (which we all faced together) to the priest.

[gutyfive]

Vatican II worked for me. I'm now a kingdom's servant, I'm now a Lord's mighty warrior. God bless

[mikesewchok]

I remember being in grade school when the changes started. The third statement of this discussion is exactly what happened in my head! Growing up from around a 10 year old as life was getting tough (so I thought as a 10+ year old) being in a Catholic grade school I always felt that the church was this solid reliable stalwart. Then the changes started, then more and more...threw me for a loop from which I never recovered.

[MaterGarruli]

My husband and I, and therefore our four living children, wouldn’t be Catholic today without the videos of Bishop Barron. We converted in 2020.

We are very traditional people: we homeschool our children, we live on a homestead in rural Appalachia, my husband works from home, and our family hierarchy is very traditional. But we have always loved, from the first simply military mass we attended on a base in Germany, vernacular masses. We love and value the TLM too, but we don’t have a special preference for it. That is pretty surprising to the people who meet us! But mass isn’t really an exercise in culture or personality. I don’t know what the answers to all this are, I am not about to argue with the authority of the church. That’s what I was accepting when I became Catholic, after all. I am no great theologian, only a simple homeschooling mother, but I am a lover and student of history, and through that lens I do know that our entire culture and the “west” as a whole have decided that God is an unnecessary, antiquated notion no longer needed. And I think that would be the case even if V II had never occurred.

My daily act of radical subversion to this is to try to love my family. Changing diapers, washing dishes, doing our taxes, taking care of the farm animals. I can’t change the world. All I can hope to do is work and pray, pray and work, and by the grace of God the vapor of this life will end with our reunification with Him. Pray for our Church, pray for the Pope, our Bishops, our countries. And love our families & communities.