. . . even from a purely immanent, sociological point of view. Top o' the Stack.
Vatican II ‘Reforms’ Disastrous . . .
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23 responses to “Vatican II ‘Reforms’ Disastrous . . .”
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You are so right about this, Bill. Notice, just as with the secular Left, which specializes in gutting traditional institutions and thus debasing the quality of social life and culture, the “reformers,” in the Church never admit to any error, never rethink any “reform” or policy, no matter how evident its failure. Nothing deters these groups, two factions of the same political and cultural tendency, that work everyday to efface the long constructive work of past generations, replacing it with institutional turmoil and cultural death. Blinded by ideological fanaticism, they instead make merry in the wreckage and push for further destruction.
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Both groups use ‘reform’ in Orwellian fashion to refer to its opposite. A reform is an improvement, not a making things worse which is what a ‘reform’ such as the elimination of cash bail does.
But how do we explain this perverse will to destruction? To the destruction of families, for example, to the sexualization and mutilation of children, etc. etc.
It sounds quick and cheap to cite demonic influence, but if there is no decent naturalistic explanation, then . . . . -
‘A religion that makes no demands fails to provide the structure that people, especially the young, want and need.’
Which is precisely why many intelligent young converts are traditionalists. And why they are drawn to precisely those aspects of the TLM (or other traditional liturgies) which are other-worldly or transcendent – because, to quote Wordsworth, ‘the world is too much with us’. It should be pretty obvious, but apparently isn’t, that any religion which is just a dressed-up version of secular pieties has little reason to exist and little reason to attract adherents who can just as much pay obeisance to those pieties by going to the pub as they can by going to church.
‘Its cultural relevance is now practically nil.’
True. Yet I strongly suspect that if Western civilisation has a future it will be due to the preservation efforts of traditionalist Christians like myself and many of my friends (most of whom are aged between 26 and 35). They have a deep-rooted care for serious thinking, truth, art and all those things which seem to be vanishing from the present Western scene with terrifying rapidity. If you talk to them and then talk to the average secular person my age the contrast in seriousness is notable (and I could tell you quite a few horror stories about not-so-average secular persons of my age) – of course, there are some atheist or agnostics who are also serious about preserving Western civilisation but they seem to be relatively rare and I think they underestimate the extent to which Christian belief is a necessary element of that civilisation.
The speed in which so many of the very same horrors of ancient pagan society, especially its treatment of children (with a few extra horrors added for good measure), have returned in the post-Christian West gives some support for the demonic influence theory, Bill! -
Hector,
How would you define ‘liturgy’? Does it include the prescriptions and proscriptions that used to be part and parcel of RCC teaching? Part of the degeneracy of RCC services is that they are not only weak on doctrine (I wonder how many young priests actually know trad doctrine) but more importantly weak on exhortation. Instead of warning people of the seven deadly sins (could the average priest list them off the top of his head and give a succinct and theologically correct definition of each?) priests around here talk about the football game. I don’t want a priest who is a ‘regular guy.’ If I wanted to hang out with ‘regular guys’ — and I don’t — I would go to a bloody bar/pub. -
>>of course, there are some atheist or agnostics who are also serious about preserving Western civilisation but they seem to be relatively rare and I think they underestimate the extent to which Christian belief is a necessary element of that civilisation.<< Good point, Hector. Connected with this is another strange phenomenon. The New Atheism (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris) is now passe. It is being replaced by false religion, paganism, Satanism. The Old and the New Atheists rejected all religion on broadly Enlightenment grounds as essentially superstition. The 'woke' folk seem to be regressing to some primitive stuff prior to the 'true' religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Ever read Frithjof Schuon? I've been reading him since grad school days but haven't yet 'blogged' him.
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Bill,
I’m using ‘liturgy’ above to mean codified, formal public rituals. By ‘other traditional liturgies’ I was referring to those who are traditionalists within their own non-RCC church – such as High Anglican friends of mine who likewise reject with horror the similarly asinine revisions, subtractions and additions to the beautiful traditional Anglican BCP liturgy. As for its connection to doctrine, though the liturgy cannot verbally include/refer to every specific doctrine of the church explicitly, implicitly it does – this is the heart of the present ‘liturgy wars’, as we might call them, in the church. So I would say the teachings of the church are inherently inseparable from its liturgy (or liturgies, there are very old Eastern Catholic liturgies still in use that differ from the NO and TLM) and vice versa.
I don’t think many priests do know trad doctrine. From what I hear, they’ve usually just been taught to automatically view all traditionalists with horror as schismatics etc.
I confess I think I preferred the New Atheists… though not by much! And I think you’re right about the ‘woke’. Explains the tattoos and animal-worship anyway. Another interesting (and perhaps related) phenomenon is the revival of ‘paganism’ in the alt right movement. It’s as though identitarian politics is inseparable from a kind of idolatry of the ‘ethnos’, place or self which leads to their worship as ‘neo-paganism’. Both movements tend to antisemitism too, which I think is telling. The alt right types will claim that Christianity and Judaism are dangerous to the ‘white race’ and all that nonsense. Essentially both the woke and racialist alt right are scandalised by anything that demands universal assent and claims ultimate moral authority.
I have not read Frithjof Schuon! I know the name but little else. Do you recommend him and if so any place where I should start with him? I haven’t read much in the ‘Traditionalist’ school of thought other than a bit of Evola who seemed a bit too crazy for me and Coomaraswamy – in the latter case only some of his writing on art (he influenced John Cage and I wrote my undergrad dissertation on Cage’s poetry. I was very ‘advanced’ in my tastes then haha!). -
Hector,
Frithjof Schuon is known as a perennialist, and I wouldn’t associate him with Julius Evola. Schuon is associated with Rene Guenon and writes in French and so his writing has a certain amount of Gallic laxity and looseness. The opposite of a Richard Swinburne, if you’ve read him. I would recommend THE FULLNESS OF GOD: FRITHJOF SCHUON ON CHRISTIANITY. Jam-packed with insights.
>>Another interesting (and perhaps related) phenomenon is the revival of ‘paganism’ in the alt right movement. It’s as though identitarian politics is inseparable from a kind of idolatry of the ‘ethnos’, place or self which leads to their worship as ‘neo-paganism’. Both movements tend to antisemitism too, which I think is telling. The alt right types will claim that Christianity and Judaism are dangerous to the ‘white race’ << I'm alt right if that means opposing the cuckservatives and anti-Trumpers. But I oppose the tribalist alt right, which is what you are talking about. And like you I am put off by the antisemitism. There is a sort of Nietzschean naturalism about the tribalist alt right. I would say, though, that one must seriously question whether Christianity has so weakened us as to make us unfit to survive in this world, which may be the only one there is, and makes us unfit to resist being dominated by 'races of color.' What role has Xianity played in the ethnomasochism that is contributing to the collapse of the UK and the USA? What I am saying is that these are questions that cannot simply be dismissed. My 'official position' developed over many posts rejects tribal alt-rightism. To resist it, though. you have to be a Platonist-Christian. -
Another book for the never-ending reading list! Thank you for the recommendation. I have not read Guenon either. I have read some Swinburne though he’s not one of my favourites – obviously a very clever man, but I find his style and his attempts to assign specific probabilities to metaphysical propositions oddly irritating.
I think Evola’s position within/relation to Traditonalism/perennialism has always been equivocal.
I don’t think Trumpian conservatism is alt right except to those who call anything to the right of Mitt Romney ‘alt right’ or ‘far right’ – which is silly. Steve Bannon was the only remotely alt right element of Trump’s original cadre, as far as I’m aware. I think the alt right is only plausibly defined as a distinctly identitarian political movement. Yes, Nietzsche is one of the presiding spirits of the alt right, though he is read through the lens of Evola, Spengler, Dugin and so on.
I am not sure that the view that Christianity has led to ethnomasochism is historically tenable – it reminds me of Gibbon’s accusation that Christianity led to the fall of the Roman Empire, which I believe is now rejected by all serious scholars. Allow me to make a relatively brief counter-argument. The failure of nerve in the West seems to be in fact precisely linked to the decline of Christianity, and therefore the lack of belief in something underpinning our society that gives it transcendental worth and a common set of allegiances and values. After all, the westward expansion of America, the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and British Empires were not built by Nietzschean pagans but by Christians (and the nation that most seriously fought to keep its Empire post-war was the highly Catholic regime of Salazar). That many contemporary Christians have confused Christian doctrine with sentimental views of race relations and historical guilt etc is not the fault of Christian doctrine but of the churches in abandoning Christian doctrine. Christianity plays next to no part in British policymaking – our current PM is a Hindu – and hasn’t for many decades and immigration is at an all-time high. By far the most prominent politician to speak out against mass migration here was Enoch Powell and he was a passionate Anglican who aged 82 published a translation and commentary on St Matthew’s Gospel. Christianity is considerably more present in the political arena in the US (and in its wider society) and the US has a far more aggressive and prominent nationalist platform in its politics than anywhere in Western Europe (or the Anglosphere) with the exception of France. Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration RN in France consistently comes second in Presidential elections, is supported by 40 per cent of Catholics, and explicitly evokes Catholicism as a necessary part of French identity.
Christians have of course been involved in an enormous amount of warfare, both defensive and offensive. If Christians could fight, tame and convert the vicious marauding Vikings they can certainly tame and convert anyone else if they have the will to. Ethnic cleansing by Christians or ethno-nationalist Christian states are also hardly a thing of the distant past – apartheid South Africa, Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Bosnia are all well within living memory.
And I think this view would only be persuasive if the West had grown MORE Christian – but the opposite is true. Our weakness is now due to our post-Christian secular culture. Atheism is maladaptive – look at massive numbers of abortions, high suicide rates, plummeting birth rates. Many of those who believe this to be the only world are essentially antinatalists by choice if not by belief. Mass migration is linked to this decline in fertility, and driven explicitly by four main factors in contemporary liberalism: sentimentality, reflexive and poorly-informed historical guilt, the desire to be perceived as ‘kind’ or on the right side of history, and the belief in GDP growth at all cost through importation of cheap foreign labour to offset falling fertility rates, inadequate skills training and so on. People who see their own pleasure as the highest possible value, as many in the West now do, ‘amusing themselves to death’ as Neil Postman put it, staring at nonsense on TV screens, watching pornography and mass sporting events, listening to idiotic music, occasionally getting off their arses to vote for more TV screens, pornography, and idiotic music, aren’t Christians living lives of sober work and effort – and if some of them claim to be Christian they have fallen very far from the path.
Lastly, all the pagan religions of the ancient world are long gone along with their empires. The last of them, the Roman Empire, was defeated by the pale Galilean and converted – and after the fall of the Western Empire in 476 the Eastern Empire lasted for nearly a thousand more years (until 1453) – far longer than the pagan Roman Empire. In the West the Christians eventually won, converting or expelling the heathen invaders, and created the most glorious, thriving civilisation in human history. And, unlike all the great empires and peoples of the ancient world – Egypt, Babylon etc – only a historically insignificant, much persecuted group of Semites from the Levant is still around with a recognisably similar set of beliefs. That, I’d argue, is the power of Judeo-Christian values tied to a distinct sense of place and culture.
(I’d like to make it clear if the thought police/censors of the future are reading this and I’ve lost my mind and decided to run for office or something that I am making a historical argument about Christianity and not hereby endorsing colonial empires, Enoch Powell’s views on migration, racialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, ethno-nationalism etc. because none of ya’ll can read. I do not believe there is anything but superficial biological differences between races) -
You are quite right about preaching today, Bill. Even when clergy do not fashion their sermons around topics, such as football, that are the stuff of guy next door talks, they often speak of those aspects of the Gospel that are most palatable to their audiences: mercy, tolerance, compassion. The moral imperatives laid down by Christ and those who followed him, such as St. Paul, all of which center on following the hard road of metanoia, are ignored.
What makes all of this worse is that in the NO, the distinction between the sacramental authority of the priest, which derives from the changes in his soul brought about by ordination and which allow him to function in persona Christi, and whatever private authority he claims for the theological and moral content of his homilies is obscured. The priest reads the Gospel in the vernacular and then walks over and delivers his sermon in the vernacular, so that the latter appears to share in or flow from the authority of the former, from sacred scripture. In this way, morally undemanding preaching created, over time, the soft, compromising, RCC that exists today.
In the Tridentine Mass, in comparison, the removal of the maniple, often taken as representing the bonds of Christ, by the priest and its placement on the altar after the reading of the Gospel in Latin, a sacred language, and before he steps up to the pulpit indicates that he no longer bound to Christ in the Mass. The Mass, with is strict rubrics and vocalizations in Latin, is, in fact, interrupted; his sermon, in the vernacular, with all its imperfections, is his alone. This may seem like a small matter, but in practice, over the long term, it is not, since it allows those who have not lost sight of the symbolism of the deposed maniple and the substitution of the vernacular for the Latin to place the sermon and the personality of the priest itself in a proper perspective. -
Disaster indeed. Why change something already correct? And to change it to chummy up to the Protestants? Madness.
Here is Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, writing in about A. D. 350:
“The Church is called Catholic then because it extends through the world from one end of the earth to the other; and because it teaches universally and completely one and all the doctrines that men ought to know concerning things both visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly; and because it brings into subjection to godliness the whole race of mankind, governors and governed; and because it treats and heals every class of sins that are committed in soul and body, and possesses in itself every form of virtue which is named both in deed and word and in every kind of spiritual gift…”
That was said about 1,600 years ago.
It is not worth changing any of it.
Least of all for a transient popularity.
(The passage from Saint Cyril in from the epilogue of the book “The Formation of Christendom” by Christopher Dawson. I highly recommend it. My copy has extensive marginal notes by both my dad and myself.) -
Hector,
You are right to highlight the lack of seriousness in both religious and secular society. You wrote: “any religion which is just a dressed-up version of secular pieties has little reason to exist and little reason to attract adherents who can just as much pay obeisance to those pieties by going to the pub as they can by going to church.” I agree.
I was once at a dinner party, and the topic of church attendance was raised. I noted that I don’t attend church and had no interest in attending services during which too much time was spent observing a band play pop music. One woman responded that the music was precisely her reason for attending church. “It makes me feel good,” she said.
I attended a church service a few years ago. One of the songs played contained lyrics which referred to God as “reckless.” “Clearly, the greatest conceivable being is not reckless,” I said to myself. After the service, I raised the topic with the pastor and later with one of the people from the band. The pastor made some interesting points about poetic license. The gist of the response from the band member? “I don’t understand the problem. You’re too serious, man. Just enjoy the music.” -
Hector,
>> but I find his [Swinburne’s] style and his attempts to assign specific probabilities to metaphysical propositions oddly irritating.<< I'm with you on the probability question. What sense would it make to say that the probability of God's existence is .87, or any number <1? God either exists or he does not. If he exists, then he necessarily exists; if he does not, then he is impossible. So the probability of God's existence is either 1 or 0. I will be told that what is at issue here is epistemic probability. But what exactly is that? God is like truth, and it is nonsense to say that the probability of the existence of truth is, say, .87. Probability assignments presuppose truth, whence it follows that the existence of truth cannot itself be something merely probable. -
Hector,
To define ‘alt right’ you need first to tell us what the alternative is an alternative to. -
Hi Bill.
You wrote:
“I will be told that what is at issue here is epistemic probability. But what exactly is that?”
This is a good question, and very interesting to me.
As I understand it, one way to characterize epistemic probability (EP) is this: it is the likelihood of a proposition’s being true given the relevant evidence available to support it. EP is an objective degree of support that a proposition has with respect to its evidence. As Nevin Climenhaga puts it, “The epistemic probability of A given B is the mind-independent degree to which B supports A.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phpr.12947
For me, this characterization of EP is a helpful way of thinking about the kind of probability we have in mind when we say things like: “Given the evidence available to the jury, Jones is probably innocent.”
But I don’t think it makes much sense to offer precise numbers to represent EP — for example, to say that the EP of human beings having libertarian free will is .71. I don’t see how someone could arrive at any precise number.
With respect to the existence of God, in one sense, the objective probability is either 1 or 0, since God is either necessary or impossible. But the EP of God’s existence, if we consider all of the relevant evidence available to us (e.g., all of the plausible arguments for theism, all of the plausible arguments against theism), then it makes sense to say that the EP of God’s existence is greater than 0 and less than 1, since no argument conclusively proves atheism and no argument conclusively proves theism.
Similarly, the EP of theism if we consider, say, just one of the better probabilistic arguments from evil and bracket all other relevant evidence is greater than 0 and less than 1. (Perhaps greater than 0 and less than .5) If we consider, say, just the best version of the cosmological argument, perhaps the EP of theism is greater than .5 and less than 1. -
Elliott,
Imagine! Being serious in a church!
The funniest example of awful church music lyrics I know is ‘He gives me lips/ to eat my chips’ from an Anglican hymn book for children. Well, at least it’s for children and theologically unobjectionable!
I broke with the Anglican church last year (into which I was never baptised or confirmed but by which I was educated in my earliest years) after three incidents – my mother’s local church put up a BLM sign on the church noticeboard (do these idiots even know what BLM actually stand for?) – the vicar is almost certainly a practising lesbian who gives sermons on the evils of colonialism and so on – a very relevant issue for contemporary Britain where outbreaks of colonialism are frequent; a sermon given by a curate who managed to mention Brexit and the Ukraine invasion in the same breath, ‘some of us thought it couldn’t get any worse when a certain referendum didn’t go our way’ etc. – since we believe that humanity literally tortured and executed as a criminal the most blameless man and God Himself, I’d like to wonder how any Christian’s standards of ‘couldn’t get worse’ could be as low as voting to legally and peacefully leave a political union, let alone bring it up in the context of a vile and illegal military assault – and if it was supposed to be a joke it was offensively unfunny; and, the final straw, when former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and some other Anglican notables signed and published an open letter calling ‘gender transitioning’ (to use the cant phrase) ‘a sacred journey’. Boke, as the Scots say.
I recently converted to Catholicism. I’m pleased to say things are not so bad at my local church, even if it is Novus Ordo. No pop music and no sermons about sports or politics. I’ve happily managed to avoid this sort of musical nonsense though I am aware it goes on elsewhere. -
Bill,
The term originated as the name of the website of a truly repulsive white supremacist called Richard B. Spencer – I’m not sure there’s anything ideologically novel or distinctive about the alt-right that distinguishes it from traditional far right politics – I’d say it’s more accurately the name of a movement or group of movements of the far right which largely happen to be internet-based. It’s an ‘alternative’ to any right-wing politics which is not based on racial identity, racial hatred and so on – right libertarianism, Burkean conservatism, classical liberalism, neoconservatism, Thatcherism etc -
Elliot,
I am well-aware of what the proponents of epistemic probability mean when they speak of it. What I was asking is whether it ultimately makes any sense when applied to the existence of God. (By the way, you did a good job of explaining what the EP boys mean by EP.)
Do you agree with me that it makes it makes no sense (i.e. is incoherent, necessarily false) to assign a probability less than 1 to the existence of truth? Suppose someone said, “Given all the available evidence, the probability of it being true that truth exists is .56.” That is senseless by my lights. And please note that my concern is not with false precision in the assigning of a probability, but with the very assignment itself if the assignment is less than 1.
Now suppose that, necessarily, God exists iff truth exists. What would you conclude? -
Thanks, Bill. I thought you were probably aware of that characterization of EP, but I thought I’d provide it for the sake of discussion. I agree with you that things become murky when EP is applied to the existence of God.
Here’s one question I have long pondered.
I understand what it means to say that IF we emphasize the data of evil and bracket all other information, then the EP of God’s existence given evil is greater than 0 and less than 1. But at some point, reason demands that we factor in the other relevant information.
For example, since God is a necessary being, either his existence is necessary or impossible. Now, those who defend the probabilistic argument from evil typically argue as follows:
Given the failure of the so-called logical problem of evil, we grant that the existence of God is logically consistent with the existence of evil and thus that God’s existence is strictly and broadly logically possible. However, the evidence of evil makes God’s existence epistemically improbable. In other words, given evil, and bracketing all other information, the probability of theism greater than 0 and less than .5.
The objector can say “Wait a minute. Think about the modal ontological argument. You have granted that God’s existence is possible. But if God is possible, then since God is necessary if existent, the probability of God’s existence is 1 regardless of the data of evil. Given the modal argument, your admission that God is possible commits you to the conclusion that God exists.
Since God is a necessary being, either his existence is necessary or impossible. You’ve granted that God’s existence is not impossible. So, how can you avoid the conclusion that God necessarily exists? -
Bill,
You asked:
“Do you agree with me that it makes no sense (i.e. is incoherent, necessarily false) to assign a probability less than 1 to the existence of truth?”
Yes, I agree. Epistemic probability presupposes the existence of truth.
“Now suppose that, necessarily, God exists iff truth exists. What would you conclude?”
From that biconditional, it follows that necessarily, if truth exists, then God exists. And since truth exists, God exists. -
Elliot,
That’s not what I wanted you to conclude. I wanted you to conclude that, given the biconditional, epistemic probability has no bearing on the existence/nonexistence of God.
To weigh the evidence for/against the existence of God, given the biconditional, is to weigh the evidence for/against the existence of truth — an absurd enterprise. -
Elliot,
Your comment @9:04 is very interesting. The modal OA can be put succinctly like this: If God is possible, then God exists. God is possible; ergo, God exists. This argument presupposes what I call Anselm’s Insight, namely, that God is noncontingent which implies that if he exists, then he necessarily exists & if he does not exist, then he is impossible.
But how do we know that God is possible?
Your claim seems to be that we know that from the failure of the logical argument from evil (LAFE).
My question for you is this: does the failure of LAFE show that God is really possible or merely that God is epistemically possible, possible for all we know? -
Bill,
You wrote “To weigh the evidence for/against the existence of God, given the biconditional, is to weigh the evidence for/against the existence of truth — an absurd enterprise.”
I see that. Given the biconditional, the enterprise is absurd. -
Bill,
Thanks for your reply to my comment @ 9:04. It seems to me that if the LAFE is really a failure, and the coexistence of God and evil is logically possible, then we have a reason to believe that the existence of God is logically and not merely epistemically possible.
The problem is that we don’t know with epistemic certainty that the LAFE is a failure. Philosophers widely recognize it as a failed argument given Plantinga’s efforts to show that human libertarian freedom is possible. However, from the fact that most philosophers view the LAFE as a failure, it doesn’t follow that we know that God is logically possible. Or so it seems to me.
My concern, though, is a little different. I’m suspicious of the kind of argument which involves granting that God is logically possible and then presenting inductive evidence regarding evil to conclude that God probably doesn’t exist. Assuming that Anselm’s Insight is correct, as I believe it is, it seems inconsistent to argue that God’s existence is logically possible and yet somehow improbable. Assuming AI, the following claims are inconsistent: (a) God’s existence is logically possible, and (b) God’s existence is improbable.
If “God exists” is a necessary truth, then it is true in every possible world and thus in every possible circumstance, including the circumstances involving the contingent existence of evil in the actual world.
Does what I’m saying make any sense?
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