I do forgive you. I think what is necessary here is for you to study the pre-conciliar magisterium and its treatment of religious liberty a little more. Because it seems to me that you could not make the arguments you're making if you were more familiar with it. We'll be posting some related material soon, in the meantime you can see here:
Yes, that it is a robber council, falsely believed to be an ecumenical council.
That conclusion is precisely how we are navigating the Church's indecectibility etc. But the more pertinent question would be, how are you navigating the Church's indefectibility and the Pope's infallibility, given the fact that V2 teaches doctrines previously condemned by the Church?
Vatican 2 was never sold as anything more than a pastoral council at the time. Of course now, they make all kinds of revisionist arguments that it was more than that, but I was around back then.
It was not a dogmatic council, such as the ones you compare it to, and there was nothing in the Vatican 2 documents that would have allowed Paul VI to change the mass, under anathema from St Pius V at the Council of Trent.
The Holy Ghost hasn't abandoned us. Paul VI abandoned the Church, was not Pope, and so Vatican II was not a true Ecumenical Council but the inauguration of a new religion.
I fail to see how it is. You are stating that Vatican II is the inauguration of a new religion. I’m simply trying to finish the logical conclusion that statement makes and asking you if that is what you are saying. You can say you don’t want to answer, which is fine, but no it is not “strangely formulated.”
The question is self-contradictory. That's because it is either indeed strangely formulated unintentionally, or begging the question. Notwithstanding your qualification (under Vatican II etc) you are saying “Are you saying the Catholic Church isn't the Catholic Church?” Of course I'm not saying such an absurd thing.
So, I don't want to answer a question like that, no. But I'll happily answer it if it's properly formulated.
If the fruits of Vatican 2 are that the Traditional Mass, loved by Saints for centuries, is no longer valid according to the Novus Ordo church, then of course it's a new religion.
I recommend Taylor Marshall's book, Infiltration. In Chapter 9, The Communist Infiltration of the Priesthood, "Clearly, high-ranking priests and bishops before and during Vatican II were infiltrated Freemasons. The testimonies provided by Bella Dodd and Manning Johnson, along with the guilt and expulsion of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, reveal that Infiltration of the Catholic clergy had been accomplished before and after 1940 (90)."
Clearly, human beings have free will and if free will has been defiled; then, there will be strange fruit. Imagine what the Holy Spirit mitigated!
Doctor, be all this as it may, I just registered your first message above. You do not get to come onto someone's website, insult them, and then praise someone else for their "moderate" terms in dealing with you. It's over to the time out naughty corner for you.
Very well written. Temperamentally, Barron has always struck me as a man with a diplomat's heart who wishes to reconcile feuding opposites, hence he is predisposed to seek the middle way as a matter of course. This isn't a bad temperament to have, particularly when trying to shepherd a parish, congregation or diocese, whether they are Corinthians in the New Testament or a tempestuous group in the midwestern United States Unfortunately, its tempting to let this devolve into a rationalistic mindset that fails to understand what's at play in the supernatural realm driving all of this toward an Apocalyptic conclusion.
Its quite remarkable how many members of the conventional Diocesan presbyterate and episcopate view Vatican II as an unassailable topic that has a higher degree of certitude than even Trent. When pressed, many of them seem to have replaced the First Commandment with the 2nd Vatican Council as a type of loyalty oath. For them, dissent isn't just in bad taste and equivalent to mixing up the shrimp and salad fork at the annual Bishop's fundraising dinner for seminarians, its inconceivable and sometimes I think they're secretly biting their tongue to avoid rending their garments and screaming "blasphemy".
Not to pick on the Jesuits, but if you look at the list of Jesuit partisans of the Council who were discarded as "too conservative" once it got rolling, its quite breath taking -- De Lubac is just one that comes to mind.
Cardinal Manning's prescient sermons on the Anti Christ still rings in my ear, and I don't see any kind of reconciliation with modernity on the horizon. As we roll toward the inevitable "final confrontation" either in the transition to the 5th and 6th age under Holehauser or the end of all ages in the Apocalypse I don't see the center holding for anyone.
Matt Gaspers had a revealing clip of Prevost at the Synodal press conferences in Rome when he did a recent livestream with Ryan Grant and Gasper's exasperation was evident when watching Prevost try to soft shoe the obvious dissent of the African clergy as just "local customs" and then, of course, he had to point out that in parts of Africa, homosexuality is a crime meriting the death penalty.
In the sense of Barron above, it strikes me that Prevost also thinks that he can negotiate a "middle way" between Francis's more edgy views and those of everyone else but still keep rolling along the Synodal roller coaster. But seeing that weird montage after the election of Cupich, Roche and the various Rogue's Gallery of Oceans 13 St Gallen Mafia heist perpetrators I am not optimistic.
We're heading toward another key Fatima date on December 10th, 2025 and I think another big milestone is about to land as we head toward an even bigger one in 2029.
Barron is a celebrity cleric. Look at who and what he’s surrounded himself with. His life is, in his words, about defending Vatican II. He’s an influencer and that’s reprehensible for a cleric. Furthermore he’s supposed to be shepherding a diocese. Those poor people. He’s overstayed his time in the limelight. Get the hook.
LOL. You’re full of yourself. Do you think I or anyone actually cares what you say? That’s hysterical coming from a woman in love with a celebrity bishop. ROFLMAO
"...a very poor implementation of the council." Sixty years now, Bishop Barron, and they still haven't got it right? As Casey Stengel, manager of the terrible 1962 New York Mets, said, "Can't anybody here play this game?"
Confused on when explaining how revolutions are bad the American Revolution is left out. Could it be that not all revolutions are bad? A point which would undermine the pinnings of this article.
In any case, the point wasn't exactly that all revolutions are bad, but rather that all revolutions represent change from what came before, and that applies even to the moderates.
“Throughout history,” the paragraph proceeding this line makes a pretty strong condemnation of Revolution and marks the cause as an overthrowing of authority. Mostly besides the point from the purpose of your article, but still I’d say an inaccurate historical assessment of Revolution.
The US revolution wasn't a true revolution. It was merely a secession from an empire. Colonial authorities remained, they just became renamed as states.
Overthrowing or replacing existing governmental institutions. In the US revolution, the king was "dethroned" but the king was far away anyway. US colonial government remained: They just became states. English law still prevailed. Property owners kept their property, in most cases. As revolutions go, it was relatively tame.
Below is what Bishop Barron actually wrote regarding "beige Catholicism. Not what the Commonweal hit piece wants us to believe.
"I commenced my writing career, roughly twenty-five years ago, as a critic of liberal Catholicism, which I referred to, in one of the first articles I ever published, as “beige Catholicism.”
By this designation, I meant a faith that had become culturally accommodating, hand-wringing, unsure of itself; a Church that had allowed its distinctive colors to be muted and its sharp edges to be dulled.
In a series of articles and talks as well as in such books as And Now I See, The Strangest Way, and especially The Priority of Christ, I laid out my critique of the type of Catholicism that held sway in the years after the Second Vatican Council. . .
I emphasized Christocentrism as opposed to anthropocentrism, a Scripture-based theological method rather than one grounded in human experience, the need to resist the reduction of Christianity to psychology and social service, a recovery of the great Catholic intellectual tradition, and a robust embrace of evangelical proclamation.
In all of this, I took as my mentor Pope John Paul II, especially the sainted pontiff’s interpretation of Vatican II as a missionary council, whose purpose was to bring Christ to the nations."
The problem for Bishop Barron is not that Vatican II has been misinterpreted in its application but rather that the Catholic faith was misinterpreted in its application at Vatican II.
It’s worth naming what’s actually being argued here: this is not just a critique of Bishop Barron’s reading of Vatican II, it’s a rejection of Vatican II’s entire vision of religious liberty.
What’s being promoted instead is basically Catholic integralism: the idea that the state must recognize the Catholic Church as the one true religion, and that religious freedom—as articulated in Dignitatis Humanae, is a modern error.
Let’s be honest: this isn’t a moderate theological disagreement. It’s a call to roll back the Church’s teaching on human dignity, conscience, and the rightful autonomy of civil society.
If modern, contemporary politics had shown anyone anything, it's that centrism and moderation are meaningless illusions, because what they're being centrist moderates about is largely determined by the extremes and where they are in the ideologocal tug of war.
We can pretend that the Catholic Church is apolitical, but we know that radical leftists had been running circles around conservative voices who are forced to follow their big book of rules; and bkatant reactionary behavior is evidently being stamped out by these gaslighting, delusional boomers.
Bishop Barron has always seemed, to me, to be most interested in getting a red hat. He goes out of his way to attract attention, and has been quite successful in marketing his brand.
This is not the first time he's accused someone of calumny, which seems a nasty way for a bishop to debate his point.
Anyway, he probably will fall under the bus, because I don't think he's smart enough to be this public and to play in the rough sport of Vatican politics.
I am interested to see who will embrace the new mass for climate change with feverish enthusiasm. I am still trying to get my mind around how this could come about, and so quickly on Leo's watch. But here we are - I guess this is modernism and staying relevant or something like that. However, I have always understood that this earth is passing away and that we Christians are in this world but not of it, not to say we should not be good stewards. Of course we should. Just as the Vatican was a key player in the new Covid religion under Francis, we will now see Leo champion the new climate change religion. I just don't buy it and am sure a lot of faithful priests will struggle with this.
Thanks Marty. Your points were acknowledged by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae but he also taught that they were very much not the whole story.
The problem is not so much serving on such a commission, but the rationale given for it.
You can also read some more about the America situation here:
https://www.wmreview.org/p/is-america-a-christian-nation-american
Just to be clear, Dr Chalmers was not banned for this comment, but for the below:
https://www.wmreview.org/p/bishop-robert-barron-attacked-responds/comment/121620532
Disagreement is one thing, but plain insults or pseudo-diagnosis over the internet results in a temporary ban and being sent to the naughty corner.
I do forgive you. I think what is necessary here is for you to study the pre-conciliar magisterium and its treatment of religious liberty a little more. Because it seems to me that you could not make the arguments you're making if you were more familiar with it. We'll be posting some related material soon, in the meantime you can see here:
https://www.wmreview.org/p/religious-liberty-extent
Yes, that it is a robber council, falsely believed to be an ecumenical council.
That conclusion is precisely how we are navigating the Church's indecectibility etc. But the more pertinent question would be, how are you navigating the Church's indefectibility and the Pope's infallibility, given the fact that V2 teaches doctrines previously condemned by the Church?
Vatican 2 was never sold as anything more than a pastoral council at the time. Of course now, they make all kinds of revisionist arguments that it was more than that, but I was around back then.
It was not a dogmatic council, such as the ones you compare it to, and there was nothing in the Vatican 2 documents that would have allowed Paul VI to change the mass, under anathema from St Pius V at the Council of Trent.
The Holy Ghost hasn't abandoned us. Paul VI abandoned the Church, was not Pope, and so Vatican II was not a true Ecumenical Council but the inauguration of a new religion.
Publishing more on that next week, so stay tuned.
To be clear, are you stating that the Catholic Church as she is today under Vatican II is not actually the Catholic Church?
Well, that's a strangely formulated question, I must say.
I fail to see how it is. You are stating that Vatican II is the inauguration of a new religion. I’m simply trying to finish the logical conclusion that statement makes and asking you if that is what you are saying. You can say you don’t want to answer, which is fine, but no it is not “strangely formulated.”
The question is self-contradictory. That's because it is either indeed strangely formulated unintentionally, or begging the question. Notwithstanding your qualification (under Vatican II etc) you are saying “Are you saying the Catholic Church isn't the Catholic Church?” Of course I'm not saying such an absurd thing.
So, I don't want to answer a question like that, no. But I'll happily answer it if it's properly formulated.
You are claiming Vatican II started a new religion. Perhaps the better question to ask is do you consider the ecumenical council Vatican II valid?
If the fruits of Vatican 2 are that the Traditional Mass, loved by Saints for centuries, is no longer valid according to the Novus Ordo church, then of course it's a new religion.
I recommend Taylor Marshall's book, Infiltration. In Chapter 9, The Communist Infiltration of the Priesthood, "Clearly, high-ranking priests and bishops before and during Vatican II were infiltrated Freemasons. The testimonies provided by Bella Dodd and Manning Johnson, along with the guilt and expulsion of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, reveal that Infiltration of the Catholic clergy had been accomplished before and after 1940 (90)."
Clearly, human beings have free will and if free will has been defiled; then, there will be strange fruit. Imagine what the Holy Spirit mitigated!
Doctor, be all this as it may, I just registered your first message above. You do not get to come onto someone's website, insult them, and then praise someone else for their "moderate" terms in dealing with you. It's over to the time out naughty corner for you.
It's not even smart enough to be an ad hominem attack. It's just an uninformed wisecrack from a physician who didn't bother to read the article.
Try replying to the actual text.
I guess you should knock that off, then
Very well written. Temperamentally, Barron has always struck me as a man with a diplomat's heart who wishes to reconcile feuding opposites, hence he is predisposed to seek the middle way as a matter of course. This isn't a bad temperament to have, particularly when trying to shepherd a parish, congregation or diocese, whether they are Corinthians in the New Testament or a tempestuous group in the midwestern United States Unfortunately, its tempting to let this devolve into a rationalistic mindset that fails to understand what's at play in the supernatural realm driving all of this toward an Apocalyptic conclusion.
Its quite remarkable how many members of the conventional Diocesan presbyterate and episcopate view Vatican II as an unassailable topic that has a higher degree of certitude than even Trent. When pressed, many of them seem to have replaced the First Commandment with the 2nd Vatican Council as a type of loyalty oath. For them, dissent isn't just in bad taste and equivalent to mixing up the shrimp and salad fork at the annual Bishop's fundraising dinner for seminarians, its inconceivable and sometimes I think they're secretly biting their tongue to avoid rending their garments and screaming "blasphemy".
Not to pick on the Jesuits, but if you look at the list of Jesuit partisans of the Council who were discarded as "too conservative" once it got rolling, its quite breath taking -- De Lubac is just one that comes to mind.
Cardinal Manning's prescient sermons on the Anti Christ still rings in my ear, and I don't see any kind of reconciliation with modernity on the horizon. As we roll toward the inevitable "final confrontation" either in the transition to the 5th and 6th age under Holehauser or the end of all ages in the Apocalypse I don't see the center holding for anyone.
Matt Gaspers had a revealing clip of Prevost at the Synodal press conferences in Rome when he did a recent livestream with Ryan Grant and Gasper's exasperation was evident when watching Prevost try to soft shoe the obvious dissent of the African clergy as just "local customs" and then, of course, he had to point out that in parts of Africa, homosexuality is a crime meriting the death penalty.
In the sense of Barron above, it strikes me that Prevost also thinks that he can negotiate a "middle way" between Francis's more edgy views and those of everyone else but still keep rolling along the Synodal roller coaster. But seeing that weird montage after the election of Cupich, Roche and the various Rogue's Gallery of Oceans 13 St Gallen Mafia heist perpetrators I am not optimistic.
We're heading toward another key Fatima date on December 10th, 2025 and I think another big milestone is about to land as we head toward an even bigger one in 2029.
Barron is a celebrity cleric. Look at who and what he’s surrounded himself with. His life is, in his words, about defending Vatican II. He’s an influencer and that’s reprehensible for a cleric. Furthermore he’s supposed to be shepherding a diocese. Those poor people. He’s overstayed his time in the limelight. Get the hook.
So true. Bishop Barron, along with priests from Nigeria, have kept me a Catholic.
That is the most shallow analysis. Read what the bishop says. It is obvious that you never have.
LOL. You’re full of yourself. Do you think I or anyone actually cares what you say? That’s hysterical coming from a woman in love with a celebrity bishop. ROFLMAO
OK, keep it peaceful please. This isn't to turn into a slanging match.
Fortis Esperantis, you've made your points clear too and there is no need for further elaboration. You can start your own site if you need to.
"...a very poor implementation of the council." Sixty years now, Bishop Barron, and they still haven't got it right? As Casey Stengel, manager of the terrible 1962 New York Mets, said, "Can't anybody here play this game?"
Oh, they're playing "The Game" alright, it's just not Catholicism.
Confused on when explaining how revolutions are bad the American Revolution is left out. Could it be that not all revolutions are bad? A point which would undermine the pinnings of this article.
You should read this by our friend:
https://open.substack.com/pub/americanreform/p/contra-lazar-is-america-really-a
In any case, the point wasn't exactly that all revolutions are bad, but rather that all revolutions represent change from what came before, and that applies even to the moderates.
“Throughout history,” the paragraph proceeding this line makes a pretty strong condemnation of Revolution and marks the cause as an overthrowing of authority. Mostly besides the point from the purpose of your article, but still I’d say an inaccurate historical assessment of Revolution.
Exactly. The American Revolution was as far as I know, was not based on a policy of revenge.
And?
The US revolution wasn't a true revolution. It was merely a secession from an empire. Colonial authorities remained, they just became renamed as states.
What characterizes a revolution?
Overthrowing or replacing existing governmental institutions. In the US revolution, the king was "dethroned" but the king was far away anyway. US colonial government remained: They just became states. English law still prevailed. Property owners kept their property, in most cases. As revolutions go, it was relatively tame.
Below is what Bishop Barron actually wrote regarding "beige Catholicism. Not what the Commonweal hit piece wants us to believe.
"I commenced my writing career, roughly twenty-five years ago, as a critic of liberal Catholicism, which I referred to, in one of the first articles I ever published, as “beige Catholicism.”
By this designation, I meant a faith that had become culturally accommodating, hand-wringing, unsure of itself; a Church that had allowed its distinctive colors to be muted and its sharp edges to be dulled.
In a series of articles and talks as well as in such books as And Now I See, The Strangest Way, and especially The Priority of Christ, I laid out my critique of the type of Catholicism that held sway in the years after the Second Vatican Council. . .
I emphasized Christocentrism as opposed to anthropocentrism, a Scripture-based theological method rather than one grounded in human experience, the need to resist the reduction of Christianity to psychology and social service, a recovery of the great Catholic intellectual tradition, and a robust embrace of evangelical proclamation.
In all of this, I took as my mentor Pope John Paul II, especially the sainted pontiff’s interpretation of Vatican II as a missionary council, whose purpose was to bring Christ to the nations."
https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/barron/the-evangelical-path-of-word-on-fire/
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/leo-pope-rober-conciliar-francis-church-vatican-ii
The problem for Bishop Barron is not that Vatican II has been misinterpreted in its application but rather that the Catholic faith was misinterpreted in its application at Vatican II.
Well, this certainly escalated quickly.
It’s worth naming what’s actually being argued here: this is not just a critique of Bishop Barron’s reading of Vatican II, it’s a rejection of Vatican II’s entire vision of religious liberty.
What’s being promoted instead is basically Catholic integralism: the idea that the state must recognize the Catholic Church as the one true religion, and that religious freedom—as articulated in Dignitatis Humanae, is a modern error.
Let’s be honest: this isn’t a moderate theological disagreement. It’s a call to roll back the Church’s teaching on human dignity, conscience, and the rightful autonomy of civil society.
A liberal trying to be "moderate centrist"
If modern, contemporary politics had shown anyone anything, it's that centrism and moderation are meaningless illusions, because what they're being centrist moderates about is largely determined by the extremes and where they are in the ideologocal tug of war.
We can pretend that the Catholic Church is apolitical, but we know that radical leftists had been running circles around conservative voices who are forced to follow their big book of rules; and bkatant reactionary behavior is evidently being stamped out by these gaslighting, delusional boomers.
Bishop Barron has always seemed, to me, to be most interested in getting a red hat. He goes out of his way to attract attention, and has been quite successful in marketing his brand.
This is not the first time he's accused someone of calumny, which seems a nasty way for a bishop to debate his point.
Anyway, he probably will fall under the bus, because I don't think he's smart enough to be this public and to play in the rough sport of Vatican politics.
I am interested to see who will embrace the new mass for climate change with feverish enthusiasm. I am still trying to get my mind around how this could come about, and so quickly on Leo's watch. But here we are - I guess this is modernism and staying relevant or something like that. However, I have always understood that this earth is passing away and that we Christians are in this world but not of it, not to say we should not be good stewards. Of course we should. Just as the Vatican was a key player in the new Covid religion under Francis, we will now see Leo champion the new climate change religion. I just don't buy it and am sure a lot of faithful priests will struggle with this.
Colour me shocked.