Here come the Tradition Bashers!

Here come the Tradition Bashers!

Just what WAS it like before Vatican II?

Michael Voris
The Vortex
10/10/12

Recording of Bishop Taylor’s address: www.dolr.org/audio/20121006yearoffaith_english.mp3

Transcript of Michael Voris’ video: www.churchmilitant.tv/scripts/vort-2012-10-10.pdf

Hello everyone and welcome to The Vortex where lies and falsehoods are trapped and
exposed. I’m Michael Voris.
With this week’s on set of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican
Council .. many Catholics around the world have been holding their breaths .. fearing that
a round of tradition bashing would be unleashed.
It appears that has begun. The lead-off hitter appears to be Little Rock Arkansas bishop
Anthony Taylor.
He has just released an audio version of his take on Vatican II. We have attached a link
for you to hear .. if you can stomach it.
Now let’s be clear right from the outset .. this is not a challenge to the bishop’s authority
or anything of the kind.
But it is a focus on a mindset that has permeated much of the Church in the west ..
including many bishops .. and consequently their priests and seminary rectors and staffs
at the chancery and so forth. This mindset is so pervasive .. that many may not even
realize that it is the very air they breath.
It is the mindset that most of what went on before the Second Vatican Council was bad or
insufficient or deficient or somehow not correct and that practically everything that
happened after the council was good and better and some coming of age fulfillment of a
“BETTER” church.
So with that in mind .. we are exploring Bishop Taylor’s assessment of the Church before
Vatican II and after.
It begins about 4 minutes in on his audio. His point of reference is his own childhood
memories of how terrible things were then and how blessedly blissful they are now.
If that is his base of authority on which to speak .. that he lived before during and after
the Council .. then we think that His Excellency needs to be reminded that there are
MANY MANY people who have the same base of lived experience who would disagree
full throatedly with his points and conclusions.
First .. he has a self-admittedly four year experience with the Pre-Vatican II days .. from
when he was 10-14 years old .. not a particularly mature platform that .. your middle
school years .. to be making vast sweeping judgments about the world.
He first mentions a “ghetto” experience of the Church. Really? A Catholic GHETTO?
Let’s look at those pre-council days and consider the utter absurdity of that observation.
Does anyone remember Bishop Sheen? NATIONAL television figure?
And how about Loretta Young who, on her NATIONAL television series over several
years, played Sister Ann, head of nursing at a Catholic hospital who was seen IN FOUR
EPISODES making visits to the Blessed Sacrament, blessing herself with holy water,
blatantly showing her trust in God etc.
And there was the series special “Road to Lourdes” about, well, Lourdes. And speaking
of Lourdes .. how about the 1943 FOUR time Oscar winning movie The Song of Bernadette?
And what about “Dial O for O’Malley” Bing Crosby in “Going My Way” and “The Bells
of St. Mary’s” who, while obviously an idealized portrayal of a Catholic priest, was close
enough to NORMAL experience of Catholic priests that he could inspire you rather than
make you laugh at the absurdity of the idealization.
And how about Pat O’Brien and Spencer Tracy as Fr. Duffy and Fr. Flanagan respectively
with Tracy taking home the best acting Oscar.
The Amazing thing about this supposed Catholic Ghetto was its ability to inspire a
PROTESTANT .. quite often anti-Catholic culture to accept its message. This “Catholic
ghetto” inspired a world with its proclamation of its ideals.
Catholics of the day had no shared anything to speak of except their faith. We didn’t
dress alike .. have the same ethnic backgrounds .. eat the same foods .. do the same
work .. live in the same places.
Heck .. in many cases .. depending on the ethnic background the original different groups
of immigrants .. we didn’t even have the same devotions. Of course there were shared
experiences .. but those experiences were rooted in the faith .. our beliefs .. what is called
our Catholic identity.
Incidentally .. it is that same Catholic identity that many bishops in the US has stated
quite openly we need to discover again. How prey tell can we re-discover and live our
Catholic identity without fear of returning to the ghetto? There appear to be contradictions
even among the bishops.
His Excellency seems to have bought into a revisionist history of a time largely before he
was born.
Now here was another humdinger .. that Catholics were discouraged from reading the
bible for fear of misinterpreting it. Given the MASSIVE misinterpretations that have
resulted from individual reading of Sacred Scripture all the way back to Martin Luther
and the 500 years since .. isn’t that a legitimate concern.
And those misinterpretations have resulted in a world full of woe.
Even today .. all over the western world .. Catholics gather for “Bible Studies” that are
nothing more than “tell me how that passage makes you FEEL sessions.” That’s not bible
study and it most certainly is not learning about the scriptures with the mind and heart of
the Church.
That Catholics don’t KNOW the Bible is a Protestant canard. Sure many may not know
book .. chapter and verse .. as if that’s really all that important anyway .. but faithful
Catholics absolutely do know those scriptural truths .. whether they could cite the book or
not.
Then he goes on to say how Catholics were discouraged from interacting with Protestants
in formal worship settings. Yep. From the point of view of our eternal lives .. what is to
be gained from formally associating with people who subscribe to a heresy.
That isn’t to say shun them and be rude and not invite them to barbeques. But it is to say
that to mingle truth with heresy in a form that appears to be condoning of error will bode
nothing but bad.
“Sharing” our faith traditions with each other gives the impression that all of them are
equally valid .. and they are not.
Unless your goal is to evangelize and convert them .. what’s the point. It’s like dating a
girl you aren’t gonna marry. Sure you might have some laughs or fun times along the
way .. but in the end .. what’s the point? The Catholic life has a very definite end .. and it
is salvation and bringing others to it.
His Excellency .. in a not so veiled slam .. implies that all that went before Vatican II was
not really what Jesus taught. THANK GOD for 1962 when the Church FINALLY came
into existence. Most of those previous 1900 years were not REALLY what Jesus taught.
In a broad and dismissive statement .. totally unbecoming of his role as a successor of the
Apostles .. he says that today’s young people who are – notice the language here –
GRIPPED – by a nostalgia for a time they never knew .. just don’t realize what “those”
days were really like.
Yep Your Excellency .. it must have been horrible to have packed churches .. vocations by
the millions .. faithful catechism being taught in a thriving Catholic school system .. two
hour long lines for confession .. attended Mass .. believed in sin .. believed ion Hell ..
didn’t shack up .. abort their children .. use birth control .. support same-sex marriage ..
divorce and re-marry like the rest of the world .. actually believe that Jesus was present in
the Eucharist .. have their children baptized into families that actually believed and
understood what that baptism meant .. honored the Mother of God .. and on and on.
Oh the horror of what the Church must have been like in “those days”.
Imagine .. balanced books in parishes .. Catholic educational institutions popping up
everywhere .. converts coming to her by the hundreds of thousands .. award winning
movies .. number-one ranked TV programs .. best-selling books .. so many vocations we
could export religious to the missions .. instead of importing priests to now shrinking
parishes.
Bishop Taylor goes on to say more and imply even much more in the next section of his
audio and we are going to pick up with that tomorrow.
And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he takes direct aim at Traditional Latin Mass .. a
Mass he comes close to portraying as a kind of meaningless waste of time for the laity
that had no real connection to anything.
Excuse me Your Excellency .. but that MASS was what brought my father into the Faith
in the late 1950’s .. a Faith that he passed on to me. And his experience was certainly not
singular .. millions of people came into the Church because of the solemnity and mystery
of that Mass .. unlike the abuse ridden current Mass .. which while absolutely valid .. has
resulted in a near collapse of the Faith in the west.
That’s why the Pope and many others in the Church are taking a long hard look at what’s
gone wrong and trying in fits and starts to fix it. It’s why we have a new translation .. to
be faithful to the original Latin.
To paint pre-Vatican II types as either nostalgic children too stupid to understand what
things were “really” like .. as if YOU are the sole expert .. or a bunch of old doddering
dementia victims is an approach that should elicit an apology.
The Church before Vatican II knew who she was .. produced countless saints and the
greatest minds the world has ever known .. brought untold millions of converts to the
Church established by Our Blessed Lord as his ONLY one true Church.
What do we have now? Look around Your Excellency, look around. A near bankrupt
bureaucracy that needs to run one fundraising campaign after another to fleece the flock
to make up for billions paid out in legal costs for homosexual predator priests .. and
shrinking congregations .. nuns who hop on a bus and travel the nation’s highways
whipping up support for a child murdering president .. 2000 parishes closed in twenty
years.
With all due respect Your Excellency .. you need to drop the revisionist history and get
out more. More on this tomorrow.
GOD Love you,
I’m Michael Voris