FAQ 8
WHAT IS THE AUTHORITY OF VATICAN II?

                                 TRADITIO Traditional Roman Catholic Network
                        E-mail: traditio@traditio.com, Web: www.traditio.com
    Copyright 1994-2016 CSM.  Reproduction prohibited without authorization.
                                                     Last Updated:  08/18/16


        TRADITIO is frequently asked whether Vatican II has any dogmatic 
force.  It is clear, as the following extracts confirm, that neither did 
Pope John XXIII, who convoked the council, authorize the council to 
treat dogma nor did Pope Paul VI, who promulgated the documents of the 
council, intend them to be part of the essential Magisterium of the 
Church.  Both regarded the council to be pastoral, not dogmatic, in 
nature, and therefore not part of the essential Magisterium of the 
Church.

        Some have noted that the titles of two of the documents, Lumen 
Gentium (On the Church) and Dei Verbum (On divine revelation), are 
preceded by the word "dogmatic."  Canonists have noted that the 
authority of a document is determined not by its mere title.  Rather, 
the authority is determined by the intent of the pope who promulgated 
the document.

        What conclusion, therefore, can be drawn about the authority of 
Vatican II?  That, according to the two popes of the council, it was 
merely pastoral in nature and is not to be accorded the authority of the 
essential Magisterium of the Church.  In holding that understanding, 
Catholics are simply obeying the words of the two popes themselves.  
Vatican II, therefore, as a pastoral council, has no dogmatic force and 
can be held to be imprudent or even in error, with no compromise to 
one's Catholic faith.

        The canonical situation is well summarized by one modern 
theologian as follows:

         "Practical decisions of churchmen, even the 
highest authorities, the pope, bishops, and priests, are something quite 
different (from that of de fide statements of truth, to which we owe 
assent of belief).

        "We do not say, for example, that a command of a pope or decision 
of a pope to call a council is true or not.  We can say that it is wise 
or not ... it is inopportune or not....  And we Catholics are never 
obliged to believe that a given command, or given decision of anyone, 
including the pope, is necessarily that of the Holy Ghost.

        "There is a kind of papolatry (attribution to the pope of divine 
powers, which he does not have) going around.  It acts as if no matter 
what comes out of Rome, it must have been inspired by the Holy Ghost.  
This line of thinking holds, for example, that if Vatican II was called, 
it means that the Holy Ghost wanted to call it.  But this is not 
necessarily the case.

        "Convoking Vatican II was a personal decision of Pope John XXIII.  
He may have thought God was telling him to call it, but who knows?  He 
has no special charism that guarantees he would recognize such a 
decision as coming from the Holy Ghost with theological certitude.

        "We can say that the Pope has the power to call a council.  We can 
say that the authorities in the Church can call upon the Holy spirit to 
guarantee, in a very narrow set of cases, that what comes from this 
council is de fide.  And nothing in Vatican II was pronounced de 
fide....

        "To call a council is a practical decision of the pope.  A person 
may piously believe that God inspired it.  But no one can say that this 
is an object of faith."  --Fr. Gregory Hesse, "Outside the Church there 
is No Salvation", Catholic Family News, February 1997 [IV:2], pp. 13 et 
seqq.)

        Even Benedict-Ratzinger admitted:  "The truth is that this 
particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain 
on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as 
though it had made itself into a sort of 'superdogma,' which takes away the 
importance of all the rest" (1988 Address to Chilean Newbishops).

        Astute Catholic laymen also saw the idiocy and danger of calling a 
council when there was no justification.  In 1958, with Catholic unity and 
vitality never greater, the Church's prestige and moral authority never 
higher, many felt that calling a council to modernize was unnecessary and 
unwise.  Why call a convention if you party's in good shape, JFK mused to 
fellow Catholic Eugene McCarthy" (Patrick Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower, 
p. 89).


EXTRACTS FROM THE TWO POPES OF THE COUNCIL
CONCERNING THE NON-DOGMATIC QUALITY OF THE COUNCIL

POPE JOHN XXIII, WHO CONVOKED THE COUNCIL

        The Roman synod [prior to Vatican II] was planned and summoned by 
John XXIII as a solemn forerunner of the larger gathering [Vatican II], 
which it was meant to prefigure and anticipate.  The Pope himself said 
precisely that, to the clergy and faithful of Rome in an allocution 
of 29 June 1960.  Because of that intention, the synod's importance was 
universally recognized as extending beyond the diocese of Rome to the 
whole Catholic world....
        The texts of the Roman synod promulgated on 25, 26, and 27 January 
1960 constitute a complete reversion of the Church to its proper 
nature....  
        The synod in fact proposed a vigorous restoration at every level 
of ecclesial life.  The discipline of the clergy was modeled on the 
traditional pattern formulated at the Council of Trent....  The synod 
therefore prescribed for the clergy a whole style of behavior quite 
distinct from that of laymen....  The distinct character of the clergy's 
cultural formation was also reaffirmed, and the outlines were given of 
the system which the Pope solemnly sanctioned the year after in Veterum 
Sapientia.  The Pope also ordered that the Catechism of the Council of 
Trent should be republished....
        The use of Latin is solemnly confirmed, all attempts at creativity
on the part of the celebrant ... are condemned..., Gregorian 
Chant is ordered, ... all appearance of worldliness is forbidden in
churches....  The ancient sacred rigor is re-established regarding
sacred spaces, forbidding women entry to the altar area....
        This massive reaffirmation of traditional discipline, which the
synod wanted, was contradicted and negated in almost every detail
by the effects of the council....  [T]he Roman synod ... was to have
been an exemplary foreshadowing of the council....  --Romano Amerio, 
Iota Unum, pp. 54 to 60

        It should be noted that the Apostolic Constitution "Veterum 
Sapientia," which was promulgated in the most solemn form before the 
cardinal's in St. Peter's just before the opening of Vatican II, was openly 
feared by those planning radical changes in the liturgy that it would 
prevent the introduction of the vulgar tongues into the Holy Mass.

        [The Council] "wishes to transmit the doctrine pure and integral, 
without any attenuation or distortion....  Our duty is not only to guard 
this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to 
dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which 
our era demands of us, pursuing thus the path which the Church has followed 
for twenty centuries.  THE WORK OF OUR COUNCIL DOES NOT, AS IF IT WERE ITS 
PRIMARY END (FINEM PRIMARIUM), LOOK TO A DISCUSSION OF SOME PARTICULAR 
ARTICLES (QUIBUSDAM CAPITIBUS PRAECIPUIS DOCTRINAE ECCLESIASTICAE) OF THE 
CHURCH'S DOCTRINE, AS THESE CAN BE FOUND QUITE COPIOUSLY IN WHAT THE FATHERS 
AND THE ANCIENT AND MODERN THEOLOGIANS HAVE HANDED DOWN AND IN WHAT WE 
RIGHTLY THINK YOU CANNOT BE IGNORANT OF, BUT ADHERE TO IN YOUR INTELLECT.
        For this a Council was not necessary.  But from the renewed, serene, 
and tranquil adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and 
preciseness, as it still shines forth in the Acts of the Council of Trent 
and First Vatican Council, the Christian, Catholic, and apostolic spirit of 
the whole world expects a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration and a 
formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect conformity to the 
authentic doctrine..., WHICH CERTAINLY SHOULD AGREE MORE WITH A TEACHING 
AUTHORITY WHOSE CHARACTER IS PARTICULARLY PASTORAL (QUAE CUM MAGISTERIO, 
CUIUS INDOLES PRAESERTIM PASTORALIS EST, MAGIS CONGRUANT).  --Pope John 
XXIII, "Allocutio Ioannis Papae XXIII in Sollemni Ss. Concilii Inauguratione 
(Gaudet Mater Ecclesia)" October 11, 1962, para. 6

        We will come together for three months with all the Bishops of the 
entire world.  We will begin on October 13 [1962].  Then everything will be 
over with between December 8 and January 25.  Everybody will go home, and 
the Council will be over and done with.  --Pope John XXIII

        Pope John conceived the Council as an eminently pastoral event.  
--Pope John Paul II, October 27, 1985, Angelus

        When, during the rebellious first session of the Council, he [Pope 
John XXIII] realized that the papacy had lost control of the process, he 
attempted, as Cardinal John Heenan of Westminster later revealed, to 
organize a group of bishops to try to force it to an end.  Before the 
second session opened he had died.  --Anne Muggeridge, The Desolate 
City (revised & expanded ed./1990), p. 72; letter from Fr. Joseph W. 
Oppitz, C.S.s.R. in "America" magazine of April 15, 1972

        He used to say at the end:  "This is no longer my council."  After 
the first session he knew that the antiforce had taken over....  And from 
then on he knew the Council was going down.  Physically, then, the carcinoma 
was eating away at his vitals, and he was already over eighty.  And he 
simply physically didn't have the strength.  --Fr. Malachi B. Martin, "The 
Storm Breaks," 1995.

        Stop the Council; stop the Council.  --Pope John XXIII, on his 
deathbed, quoted in Kevin Haney, "The Stormy History of General 
Councils," The Latin Mass, Spring 1995, attributed to Jean Guitton (ob. 
March 21, 1999), the only Catholic layman to serve as a peritus at Vatican 
II.  Also reported by Michael Davies in Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre.

        Pope John XXIII expected the Council to end in three months, just 
like the Italian Synod that preceded it, which issued, at the Pope's 
direction, very traditional decrees, such as the full retention of Latin.  
The pope said:  "We will come together for three months with all the Bishops 
of the entire world.  We will begin on October 13 [1962].  Then everything 
will be over with between December 8 and January 25.  Everybody will go 
home, and the Council will be over and done with."  Little did he predict 
how wrong he would be!

        Cardinal Heenan, the Cardinal Primate of England, who knew Pope John 
well, wrote in his work entitled "Crown of Thorns" in 1974:  "The bishops 
were under the impression that the liturgy had been fully discussed [at the 
Second Vatican Council].  In retrospect it is clear that they were given the 
opportunity of discussing only general principles.  Subsequent changes were 
more radical than those intended by Pope John and the bishops who passed the 
decree on the liturgy.  His sermon at the end of the first session shows 
that Pope John did not suspect what was being planned by the liturgical 
experts."  The Cardinal Primate had already written in 1968:  "Jesus wept 
over Jerusalem, and Pope John would have wept over Rome if he had foreseen 
what would be done in the name of his Council."

         Similarly, in February 1965, when someone announced to Padre Pio of 
Pietrelcina that soon he would have to celebrate the Mass according to a new 
rite, ad experimentum, in the vernacular, which had been devised by a 
Vatican II liturgical commission, "in order to respond to the aspirations of 
modern man," Padre Pio immediately, even before seeing the text, wrote to 
Paul VI to ask him to be dispensed from the liturgical experiment and to be 
able to continue to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass.  When Antonio 
Cardinal Bacci personally came to see Padre Pio and to bring the 
dispensation, Padre Pio let a complaint escape in the presence of Paul VI's 
messenger:  "For pity sake, end the Council quickly."  (Fr. Jean, O.F.M. 
Cap., a colleague of Padre Pio's in the Capuchin Order)


POPE PAUL VI, WHO PROMULGATED THE DOCUMENTS OF THE COUNCIL

        In view of the conciliar practice and practical purpose of the 
Council, this sacred Synod defines as binding on the Church only those 
matters of faith and morals which it has expressly put forward as such.  
-- Pope Paul VI had read to the Fathers as they prepared to vote on the 
Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, this declaration by the 
Theological Commission of the Council, March 6, 1964 (Austin Flannery, 
ed., Vatican Collection, I, p. 423).  

        The magisterium of the Church did not wish to pronounce itself 
under the form of extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements....  --Pope Paul 
VI, discourse closing Vatican II, December 7, 1965

        There are those who ask what authority, what theological 
qualification, the Council intended to give to its teachings, knowing that 
it avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions backed by the Church's 
infallible teaching authority.  The answer is known by those who remember 
the conciliar declaration of March 6, 1964, repeated on November 16, 1964.  
In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, it avoided proclaiming in an 
extraordinary manner any dogmata carrying the mark of infallibility.  --Pope 
Paul VI, General Audience of January 12, 1966

        The rite [of the New Mass] by itself is NOT a dogmatic definition.  
--Pope Paul VI, November 19, 1969, Apostolic Constitution, "Missale 
Romanum

        Differing from other Councils, this one was not directly dogmatic, 
but disciplinary and pastoral.  --Pope Paul VI, August 6, 1975, General 
Audience


EXPLANATORY NOTE OF THE THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION OF THE COUNCIL
ADDENDUM TO "LUMEN GENTIUM"

        The Notificatio of March 6, 1964, of the Theological Commission of 
the Council concerning the authority of the Council was as follows:  "In view 
of the conciliar practice and THE PASTORAL PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT COUNCIL, 
this sacred Synod defines matters of faith or morals as binding on the Church 
only when the Synod itself openly declares so" [Ex Actis Ss. Oecumenici 
Concilii Vaticani II, Notificationes Factae ab Exc.mo Secretario Generali Ss. 
Concilii in Congregatione Generali CXXIII diei XVI Nov. MCMLXIV].

        The Council never did openly declare any of its teaching as binding 
on the Church.  Never in the history of the Catholic Church had a Council 
taken pains to declare that it was NOT teaching infallibly.


THEOLOGICAL NOTE OF THE GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE COUNCIL

        The Council's General Secretary, Pericle Cardinal Felici, Cardinal 
Prefect of the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, the Church's 
highest theological tribunal, issued the "theological note" of the 
council, i.e., the level of theological authority of the particular 
council:  "We have to distinguish according to the schemata and the 
chapters those which have already been the subject of dogmatic 
definitions in the past; as for the declarations that have a novel 
character, we have to make reservations."

        The subsequent Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Sacred 
Congregation of the Holy Office (Doctrine of the Faith) later confirmed 
this theological note:  "The truth is that this particular council 
defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest 
level, as a merely pastoral council" (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect 
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, El Mercurio, July 17, 
1988).


CONCLUSION

        As Atila Sinke Guimaraes concluded, on the basis of a 15-year 
study of the letter, spirit, and thought of Vatican II, it was only 
AFTER "Vatican II is over and victory clearly won by the progressivists, 
they gradually began to say that the Council was not only pastoral, but 
dogmatic" (In the Murky Waters of Vatican II).

        Nevertheless, the pope who summoned the Council and the pope who 
promulgated its decrees made it clear that Vatican II was a pastoral, 
not a dogmatic Council.  Catholics are, therefore, within their rights 
to make reservations regarding any novelties emanating from Vatican II 
that are out of step with Sacred Tradition and the previous continuous 
Magisterium (official teaching) of the Church.

        In fact, it is canonically possible for a future pope to annul the 
outcome of the council, as it was merely a pastoral council:

           * The Council of Ephesus (449), which was regularly called and 
             attended by all the East and by delegates from Pope St. Leo the 
             great, was annulled by that pope's subsequent opposition to it 
             and was branded as the Latrocinium, or "Robbers' Council"
           * The Council of Hieria (754) was annulled by Pope Stephen II in 
             769.  This council had introduced and blessed iconoclasm.
           * The Council of Pistoia (1794), which was attended by the Holy 
             Roman Emperor Joseph II, the bishops of France, and some 
             bishops of Italy, was annulled by Pope Pius VI.  It had adopted 
             "reforms" and liturgical experiments that resemble to a 
             significant extent the innovations of Vatican II (1962-1965), 
             including the provisions that there be only one "table" in each 
             church and that it should not be ornamented with flowers or 
             relics.  The council condemned processions in honor of the 
             Blessed Virgin and the Saints, the Rosary, the Way of the 
             Cross, and images.  It demanded a "simplified" Mass said entirely 
             out loud in the vulgar tongues.  Pope Pius VI, in annulling the 
             decrees of the council, called them "rash, offensive to pious 
             ears, insulting to the Church, favorable to the charges of 
             heretics against it."

        "The Church united in councils, even general councils, has 
sometimes been mistaken" (Dictionaire de Theologie Catholique).  The 
teaching of the Council of Florence on the matter and form for the 
Sacrament of Holy Orders (Sessio VIII, November 22, 1439) was set aside 
by Pope Pius XII in his Apostolic Constitution "Sacramentum Ordinis" 
(1947).

        In fact, Paul VI, who promulgated the documents of the Council in 
1965, began just three years later to reject the fruits of that Council, 
even associating it with the work of the Devil.  He issued not one, but 
several, startling statements to that effect.

        (1) "The Church finds herself in an hour of anxiety, a disturbed 
period of self-criticism, or what would even better be called self-
destruction  [auto-distruzione, auto-demolition, auto-destruction].  It is 
an interior upheaval, acute and complicated, which nobody expected after the 
Council.  It is almost as if the Church were attacking itself.  We looked 
forward to a flowering, a serene expansion of conceptions which matured in 
the great sessions of the council.  But ... one must notice above all the 
sorrowful aspect.  It is as if the Church were destroying herself.  --Pope 
Paul VI, December 7, 1968, Address to the Lombard Seminary at Rome

        (2)  We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall 
the smoke of Satan (fumus Satanae) has entered the temple of God:  it is 
doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation.... We 
thought that after the Council a day of sunshine would have dawned 
for the history of the Church.  What dawned, instead, was a day of 
clouds and storms, of darkness, of searching and uncertainties.  --
Pope Paul VI, June 29, 1972, Sermon during the Mass for Sts. Peter & 
Paul, on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of his coronation [in a May 
16, 2008, interview, Cardinal Vergilio Noe, Paul VI's Chief Liturgist and 
Master of Ceremonies, stated that the pope was specifically referring to the 
Novus Ordo service with this statement]

        (3) Don't be surprised at Our answer and don't write it off as 
simplistic or even superstitious:  one of the Church's greatest needs is to 
be defended against the evil we call the Devil.  --Pope Paul VI, November 
15, 1972, General Audience

        (4) The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of 
the Catholic world.  The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout 
the Catholic Church even to its summit.  Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is 
spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the 
Church.  --Pope Paul VI, October 13, 1977, Address on the Sixtieth Anniversary 
of the Fatima Apparitions

        More recently, when the Vatican was trying to enter into an 
agreement with the Society of St. Pius X before July 1, 1988, "in the 
protocol offered to Msgr. Lefebvre and accepted by the Fraternity of St. 
Peter, it was not required to give an inner or even outer assent to the 
innovative teachings of the Second Vatican Council.  It was required merely 
to abstain from polemics and to adopt an attitude of 'study' in the matter.  
But one could never allow a person to come into or be in manifest communion 
with the Catholic Church while simultaneously withholding assent from 
obligatory Church teaching.  From this it follows that the innovations of 
the Second Vatican Council are not absolutely obligatory.  And this is truly 
the case, since the Council deliberately refrained from giving a dogmatic 
weight to its teachings."  (Parochus, "A Troublesome Passage of Vatican II," 
The Remnant (XXVIII:16), September 15, 1995, p. 2


AN ADDENDUM ON THE FIFTH ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, OF CONSTANTINOPLE II (553)

        A Catholic has to be free to say of the Second Council of 
Constantinople what is obvious to anyone who has ever studied it:  it did 
nothing to bring back the Monophysites [heretics] into the bosom of the 
Church, and in fact alienated many of them still further.  Given the 
confusing nature of what the council was attempting to do, orthodox 
Catholics, for their part, could not help but be perplexed and demoralized 
by this council, and indeed for decades afterward whole areas of the West 
refused to acknowledge it as an ecumenical council at all, convinced that it 
had in some way repudiated or vitiated the teaching of [the Fourth 
Ecumenical Council, of] Chalcedon.

        St. Isidore of Seville did not have a kind word to say about 
Constaninople II.  Basing ourselves, therefore, on the testimony of human 
reason, we are surely free to conclude that this council, although it taught 
nothing certainly erroneous, was an appalling catastrophe that ought never 
to have been convoked.  It is not possible to image any grounds on which even 
the most hardened neo-Catholic could describe this fifth ecumenical council 
as an unequivocal boon.

        The example of the Second Council of Constantinople serves to 
demonstrate not only the confusion that an ecumenical council can introduce 
into the Church even without teaching dogmatic error, but also that the 
entire life of the Church need not be organized around the decrees of the 
most recent council.

         Today we hear ceaseless exhortations to the effect that we must all 
imbibe the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, that the entire life of the 
Church must be reordered in conformity with its decrees, that indeed all the 
Church's activity take place in light of the council.  Following 
Constantinople II, on the other hand, when churchmen could see that the most 
recent council had caused only division, confusion, and strife, we hear no 
such exhortations.  As we have indicated, Pope St. Gregory the Great 
actually counseled a bishop troubled by the council simply to remain silent on 
the matter, holding fast to the Catholic faith as expounded at the [previous] 
Council of Chalcedon.  Gregory and the other popes of the sixth and seventh 
centuries were intelligent enough to see that an obsessive emphasis on "the 
council" would have perpetuated schism and continued to demoralize the 
orthodox party.  Whenever possible, then, they simply igonred it.

         Why not, then do the same with Vatican II?  If one ecumenical 
council [especially with Vatican II being merely a pastoral rather than a 
dogmatic council] can be acknowledged as unhelpful at best and damaging to 
the Church at worst, then surely another one can.  Why not follow Pope St. 
Gregory the Great's advice to the bishop of Milan:  just say nothing about 
it?  (Thomas E. Woods, Jr., "An Ambiguous Council" in Catholic Family News, 
March 2002 [IX:3], p. 18)