Cardinal Cottier assesses legacy of Vatican II
CWN – July 11, 2012
Cardinal Georges Cottier, who served as theologian of the pontifical household from 1989 to 2005, assessed the legacy of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) as the fiftieth anniversary of its opening approaches.
The prelate, now 90, served as a peritus at the Council.
“I would say that much has been done,” he said in an interview. “For example, the structure of episcopal conferences; the way some of them function now; or the dicasteries of the Church which didn’t exist before, Christian union, dialogue with non-believers–all these are new things which often function well. Also those areas that regard justice and peace–these things didn’t exist before the Council, as well as concern for dialogue with the world, the idea itself of the New Evangelization was born with the Council. Also the Synod of Bishops and the doctrine itself of the last Popes, which have as their no. 1 program the implementation of the Council.”
Asked why “there are still people who resist,” the Swiss Dominican replied:
I believe that, basically, there must be an act of faith in the Church. The great crisis that appeared after the Council in many Catholics, was that they did not regard the Church as a mystery of faith, as body of Christ, people of God, bride of Christ – all these beautiful images — but as a sociological event. So, why does this happen? Because some are mistaken in the idea. Hence it is that the first need consists in having eyes of faith on the Church, as well as a serious study of the Council, because I don’t know if the documents have been sufficiently studied to be accepted.
Having said this, it’s true that in my generation, more than in young generations, there are persons with nostalgia for what they have lived in the past. However, in regard to this, one must be able to give some things up.
Additional sources for this story: Cardinal Cottier on Evangelization: Witness of Vatican II Speaks About What’s Worked Best in 50 Years (Zenit) www.zenit.org/article-35172?l=english
It has always seemed to me that it is the Novus Ordo that places inordinate emphasis on the “people of God” and nearly completely ignored the fact that the Church is the Bride of Christ, founded by God and rooted in eternity. They are the ones who seem to have the mistaken idea that it is a “sociological event”.
And also I believe he is incorrect in stating that it is only or even primarily those of his generation who have a longing for tradition. In our chapel in St. Mary’s, Ks., we have so many young people we are bursting at the seams! In Europe, you can see thousands of young people attending the pilgrimages such as Chartres, so I don’t think it is an American phenomenon by any stretch.
This old peritii can’t admit what a failure the Council and what has happened afterwards has been.
Another bleating Vatican II propagandist who – PRAISE GOD – is on his way out.
You see, it’s all been interpreted improperly – for 50 years now. We merely need more time to study the documents. Those who follow the faith exactly as it always has been are simply “nostalgic,” i.e. wrong to think as Athanasius, Pope Saint Gregory, Aquinas.
Out of one side of their mouths – to a person – they’ll say that nothing has changed. Yet out of the other side of their mouths they highlight all of the changes and tell interviewers that traditional Catholics must change. Traditional Catholics must sign written agreements. At the same time, nothing is ever demanded of the worst of the worst.
People think I’m kidding or being when I say these men are sick, but they truly are. The most telltale sign of insanity is the inability to properly use your mind in a logical manner. If you tell a crazy person he’s really not batman he won’t believe you, despite the enormous amount of evidence in front of him. If you show these people indisputable evidence that their council has caused an unholy catastrophe, they’ll tell you how great things really are. Destruction we haven’t seen in a two-thousand year history is right before their eyes, yet all they have to ramble on about is some fantasy of how far we’ve come with Jews and Protestants?
No matter what objective evidence is before them, they will never face the simple fact they’ve create an unholy monster that done unprecedented damage to Holy Church. They will never admit it, but THEY THEMSELVES are largely personally repsonsible for the massive apostasy, the destruction of the priesthood, the scuttling of churches, the child rape etc.
Cheer up, serv. They’ll all be dead soon and their spiritual offspring are infertile.
Well, at least non compos mentos is a practical defense in earthly courts. Not sure if it carries much weight in the REAL Supreme Court, though, especially by anyone who raised his hand on the Bible and swore the Oath Against Modernism at his ordination.
Serv’s right. This is a sickness.
Modernism and its evil spawn, neo-modernism, are objectively identifiable from the clear teachings of Pascendi.
And great Thomistic scholars, writing in the American Ecclesiastical Review prior to Vatican II, writers such as Fr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, Fr. Edward Hanahoe and Fr. David Greenstock, saw clearly what was coming and WARNED THE CHURCH!
So did Pope Pius XII.
Of course, they were ignored.
Which set of HARD FACTS, of course, seems to be the only “defense” ( as well as one heck of an “offense”! ) any “traditionalist” ( i.e., an informed, obedient Catholic ) needs.
Sick? Insane? Yes, perhaps, but there’s a simpler answer. Cottier and his ilk are not Catholic. End of. They just kept on wearing he same kit and drawing the same benefits after their defection.
I agree with Selous. I don’t think these people are Catholic, and I don’t think they will all just die out either. Barring God’s intervention, there will be no end of them in the Church until the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. One has to wonder if they have ever had the love of the true Catholic Church in their hearts in the first place. Many of them are probably on a seek and destroy mission and some may actually believe they are doing God’s will.
As for whether they are culpable, that is something only He can know.
Cottier was the preacher to JP II. Cottier believed in the dual (or is it dueling)
covenant theory. He is a heretic.
He said, and this is on the Vatican’s website, the following:
Finally, there are some readings which are theologically incorrect or wrong in the New Testament, and which have served as a pretext of a hostility which was diffused in large portions of the Christian populations, in which the Jewish population found itself scattered. Too many unjustifiable attitudes found their justification; and from there is born in many Christians a passivity and an absence of reaction when Europe was in the throes of the violent Hitlerian wave. Other Christians, its true, did much to help save the persecuted Jews.
It does not at all deal with attenuating the seriousness of the breakage added by the Incarnation of the Son of God. The Christian faith professes that He is the true Messiah, who, died and resurrected, he is alive and present in his Church. The faith of the Jewish people, who did not recognize him equally leads to the truth of Christ, but in what was promised, they are still waiting. Two truths must guide us. The first is that the breakage did not abolish the continuity. The second is that the drama, being of a religious order, theologically, requires from our part a great nobility of feelings and a delination particular, to the liking of that of Apostle Paul (cf. Romans 9,2).
www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01111997_p-22_en.html
Cottier also promoted condoms as protection from Aids.
“the breakage did not abolish the continuity”
Perfect example of ignoring the principle of non-contradiction.
“Finally, there are some readings which are theologically incorrect or wrong in the New Testament”
That is a horrendous statement to see on the Vatican website. If he is actually asserting that the NT is in part theologically incorrect or in error, then he is certainly a heretic, albeit a material heretic if he has not been admonished for this.
However, could it be a mistranslation and did he actually say that there are some readings of the NT which are theologically incorrect? Such as a Protestant reading of the NT which interpreted it as justifying sola fidei, for example.
It is unusual, even for modernists, to launch a blatant, full-frontal assault on the inerrancy of Scripture. One thing which makes me wonder if it is a bad translation is a sentence written earlier in the passage:
“It knows that it is from him that the Incarnate Word took his humanity….”
Surely, he doesn’t mean to interpose a distinction between the person of Christ and the Incarnate Word here – or does he?
I don’t think it’s a translation problem, Deacon; otherwise the Vatican would have corrected it by now. Secondly, he need to spout that heresy to justify his dual covenant theory.
As far as your second point, I do think he meant what he said and I think he’s nuts.
Here’s what he said about Obama and abortion:
In the run-up to President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated July 10 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, an influential cardinal and Vatican adviser has praised Obama’s “humble realism” and compared the president’s approach to abortion to the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas and early Christian tradition about framing laws in a pluralistic society.
Swiss Cardinal George Cottier, 87, former theologian of the papal household under Pope John Paul II, laid out those views in a cover essay in the current issue of 30 Giorni, perhaps the most widely read journal of Catholic affairs in Italy.
Styled as an analysis of two Obama speeches – his May 17 commencement address at the University of Notre Dame and his June 4 speech to the Islamic world in Cairo – Cottier’s essay was overwhelmingly positive, repeatedly arguing that Obama’s “realism”, as well as his commitment to finding “common ground”, resonate with Christian tradition and the social teaching of the Catholic church.
Seen through American eyes, perhaps the most striking element was Cottier’s analysis of what Obama had to say at Notre Dame. The university’s decision to invite Obama, and to award him an honorary degree, were widely criticized in Catholic circles in the States, given Obama’s positions on abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other life issues. More than 80 bishops publicly objected to the event.
Cottier, however, compared Obama’s Notre Dame address to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, in its accent on dialogue and common ground, and to the document Dignitatis Humanae of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) on conducting the search for truth in a pluralistic society. Christians, Cottier wrote, “can be in agreement” with Obama’s “way of framing the search for solutions.”
ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/former-papal-theologian-praises-obamas-realism-even-abortion
“As far as your second point, I do think he meant what he said and I think he’s nuts.”
Think I’ll have to agree with you, LOTI. Anybody who can agree with the antichrist’s “way of framing the search for solutions” is probably insane. Cottier could do to read Frank Sheed’s “Theology & Sanity.” – should be compulsory reading in every seminary.