How Vatican II adversely affected life for Catholics in the 21st century

discombobulated1 said:

yes, I say the worst change due to V2 was this virtual ditching of the doctrine (dogma) of Hell.

I don't believe I EVER heard a homily about Hell.. except one time this priest referred to some author or another who wrote a FICTIONAL account of how a selfish woman was about to go to Hell and the only thing that saved her was that she gave some poor person an onion or some such thing... can't recall the whole story but it was fiction!

So I've never heard a Catholic priest inform people of Hell and such things as: most people end up there. But that is what Jesus said

Click to expand...

The few Catholic masses I have attended in my life have, with one exception, had homilies which amounted to harangues of the congregation in an effort to increase their financial offerings. No particular reasons were given for increasing their giving. They were not told that if they gave more money their time in Purgatory would be reduced or that they could avoid hell. They were simply berated for not giving more.

The exception was a homily by a young priest which was actually fairly interesting. It was on the idea of salvation being a gift of God's grace. However, in the middle of the homily he switched around to the idea that we are required to earn our salvation through various works. He did not specifically mention salvation as being from hell.

In any event, from my very limited experiences I would agree with you that hell is not at all on the agendas of Catholic homilies these days.

bbbbbbb said:

The few Catholic masses I have attended in my life have, with one exception, had homilies which amounted to harangues of the congregation in an effort to increase their financial offerings.

Click to expand...

I’ve never been to one with a homily like that, not one, even when I have attended a Novus Ordo mass.

Also I would submit that anecdotal evidence of this sort is irrelevant and it is unfair to generalize about Roman Catholic homiletics on the basis of your own individual experience without conducting at least some kind of survey. Which you could easily do considering the extremely large number of Roman Catholic Churches which now make their services available on YouTube and other streaming platforms.

bbbbbbb said:

However, in the middle of the homily he switched around to the idea that we are required to earn our salvation through various works.

Click to expand...

Well St. James said that faith without works is dead, and the Roman Catholic Church has always rejected even the mild form of Sola Fide embraced by traditional Protestants, so frankly I don’t see what the problem is.

The Liturgist said:

I’ve never been to one with a homily like that, not one, even when I have attended a Novus Ordo mass.

Click to expand...

Some on this forum can really tells stories.

concretecamper said:

Some on this forum can really tells stories.

Click to expand...

The Catholic Church gets it form both sides: Anti-Catholics with all sorts of distorted views, and Ultra traditional "Catholics" who believe VII was some kind of diabolic victory.

discombobulated1 said:

I can only speak for myself, really. For some reason, the Catholics I've known are reticent to discuss any dissatisfaction with the Church. Not tht I get out much anyway. Maybe I just haven't met "the right ones."

In any case, when I was growing up, V2 had not yet taken hold. In some ways, it probably still hasn't?

In any case, priests back in those days were priest-like. They showed concern for the flock. One time my family (or maybe more than once) had the priest over for dinner. Today, I don't like any priests... just being honest. That's not to say I didn't like them when I first encountered them and some of their homilies were good but it seems inevitably, the priest would say something rude or exhibit impatience or what have you. I remember one time I was in some kind of crisis, the details of which escape me at this time. I called the parish priest and he was short and unconcerned, and did NOT help me, which tended to make me more upset, not surprisingly.

So yeh... V2 sent the signal to all that things were not going to be the same as they were--in any way at all.

I used to be crtitical of people who left the Church... not anymore. But I think of how Christ, after telling people about the Eucharist (John, chapter 6), that it is His actual Body and Blood, and after most of his followers left Him, He asked Peter and the 12

"Will you also leave?"

And Peter said to Jesus

Where would we go? You have the words of eternal life

So yeh... I can't really get enthused about going to some other "church," not after experiencing the Real Presence. And also, the Protestant churches I've been to dislike Catholics.. some heartily.

Click to expand...

I'd read history. The medieval period, especially, was fraught with bad clergy. And, at councils preceding that era by many centuries, the Church already began addressing serious abuses by the clergy. People will continue to be people regardless of councils, and any issues today have more to do with plain old sin, societal changes, and the abuse of Vat II decrees, etc. Your sentiment above, quoting John 6, is the answer.

I used to be a member of a Protestant church where the pastor, who, quite inappropriately, was virtually worshipped by the congregation -and had actually told them that he no longer wanted to sin after being born again- had ended up committing marital infidelity which tore the church apart. People will disappoint us, and while society seemed more balanced and sound-minded overall back in the day when I was an altar boy memorizing Latin, people still had their issues and their sin including priests who were nonetheless often held up on some kind of saintly holiness pedestal to an unwarranted degree IMO.

Akita Suggagaki said:

The Catholic Church gets it form both sides: Anti-Catholics with all sorts of distorted views, and Ultra traditional "Catholics" who believe VII was some kind of diabolic victory.

Click to expand...

Indeed. This is why I have always made a point to defend the RCC from criticism. Most people prejudiced against the Roman Catholic Church are also prejudiced against Orthodoxy and traditional liturgical Catholicism. They are more than anti-Roman Catholic in most cases, but actually anti-Catholic in the sense of being opposed to any church that preserves liturgical tradition. And as I see it, this is anti-Christian.

Akita Suggagaki said:

The Catholic Church gets it form both sides: Anti-Catholics with all sorts of distorted views, and Ultra traditional "Catholics" who believe VII was some kind of diabolic victory.

Click to expand...

Indeed. This is why I have always made a point to defend the RCC from criticism. Most people prejudiced against the Roman Catholic Church are also prejudiced against Orthodoxy and traditional liturgical Catholicism. They are more than anti-Roman Catholic in most cases, but actually anti-Catholic in the sense of being opposed to any church that preserves liturgical tradition. And thus as I see it, anti-Catholicism is anti-Christian.

The Liturgist said:

I’ve never been to one with a homily like that, not one, even when I have attended a Novus Ordo mass.

Also I would submit that anecdotal evidence of this sort is irrelevant and it is unfair to generalize about Roman Catholic homiletics on the basis of your own individual experience without conducting at least some kind of survey. Which you could easily do considering the extremely large number of Roman Catholic Churches which now make their services available on YouTube and other streaming platforms.

Click to expand...

That is the reason I presented my personal experience as just that. I do not presume that my random experiences prove or disprove anything. The point I was addressing was that hell is not a popular topic in Catholic masses. It has also become extremely rare in most Protestant churches. Is it very common today in Orthodox churches?

The Liturgist said:

Well St. James said that faith without works is dead, and the Roman Catholic Church has always rejected even the mild form of Sola Fide embraced by traditional Protestants, so frankly I don’t see what the problem is.

Click to expand...

The problem was the complete volte face he did. The first half of his homily was a solid exposition of salvation by God’s grace alone and the second half was an equally firm exposition of the necessity of works. There was no smooth transition between the two. Afterwords my Catholic friend also expressed his surprise with the homily.

bbbbbbb said:

Is it very common today in Orthodox churches?

Click to expand...

Most Orthodox churches don’t even pass a collection plate (some do, although I have never seen them use the brass plates Protestant chruches use; a Syriac Orthodox cathedral passes collection sack which look kind of like Santa Claus stockings, and an Old Calendarist ex-ROCOR churches passes around four separate cardboard boxes for donation to the different causes). Of course there really isn’t much need, since the normal way of donating small amounts to the Orthodox church is to buy a candle and light it up, thus adding to the beauty of the liturgy, which I quite like (and people who are indigant can of course have candles; we are not practitioners of simony). I’ve never once seen a homily asking people to donate money. Nor read one in the Patristic homilies. I can’t 100% say that one hasn’t happened, but the idea seems patently absurd.

Also, we never put vessels containing money on the altar….that is one thing I see Protestant churches doing which deeply bothers me, because money is not worthy of being placed on the Holy Altar. Also, it is a subversion of the ancient Offertory to have it used for offering money; the original use of this part of the service was to facilitate the offering of bread and wine for use in the Eucharist.

The Liturgist said:

Most Orthodox churches don’t even pass a collection plate (some do, although I have never seen them use the brass plates Protestant chruches use; a Syriac Orthodox cathedral passes collection sack which look kind of like Santa Claus stockings, and an Old Calendarist ex-ROCOR churches passes around four separate cardboard boxes for donation to the different causes). Of course there really isn’t much need, since the normal way of donating small amounts to the Orthodox church is to buy a candle and light it up, thus adding to the beauty of the liturgy, which I quite like (and people who are indigant can of course have candles; we are not practitioners of simony). I’ve never once seen a homily asking people to donate money. Nor read one in the Patristic homilies. I can’t 100% say that one hasn’t happened, but the idea seems patently absurd.

Also, we never put vessels containing money on the altar….that is one thing I see Protestant churches doing which deeply bothers me, because money is not worthy of being placed on the Holy Altar. Also, it is a subversion of the ancient Offertory to have it used for offering money; the original use of this part of the service was to facilitate the offering of bread and wine for use in the Eucharist.

Click to expand...

My question was in reference to hell. The specific problem that concerned our friend was the apparent unbelief of current Catholic clergy in the doctrine of hell. In your experience in Orthodoxy does doctrine play a significant role?

bbbbbbb said:

My question was in reference to hell. The specific problem that concerned our friend was the apparent unbelief of current Catholic clergy in the doctrine of hell. In your experience in Orthodoxy does doctrine play a significant role?

Click to expand...

Yes, to an extreme extent. I don’t know of any church which is more uncomfortable with Pietism or doctrinal error. And we do very much believe in the existence of Hell.

That being said, much of the doctrine of the Orthodox Church is defined in our liturgical texts, which represent an authoritative guide to how we interpret scripture. In this respect we are similiar to the Anglican Communion. In theory, the Roman Catholic liturgy would also function this way, except insofar as they have imported wholesale the Byzantine Rite liturgy from Eastern Orthodox churches and this disagrees with doctrinal assertions that exist in some of the other rites such as the Roman and Mozarabic (indeed most, perhaps all, Byzantine Rite Catholics do not even recite the filioque, and also it is the position of the RCC that the filioque should never be expressed in Greek, presumably because it would semantically imply something else), it is necessary to make reference to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

That being said, since most people outside of Orthodoxy lack our service books, we also have books such as Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by the great ROCOR Protpresbyter Michael Pomazansky, memory eternal, translated into English by Fr. Seraphim Rose, memory eternal, and we also have the Orthodox Study Bible.

It is important to avoid materials that originated with the Old Calendarists, however, for example, orthodoxinfo.com, and the Old Calendarists also did their own book of Dogmatic Theology in order to stress their belief that “ecumenism” is the worst “pan heresy” that ever existed, by the Old Calendarist priest Michael Azkoul. These materials are often labeled as Eastern Orthodox, but Old Calendarist doctrine has become distorted, only they claim it is the doctrine of the “World Orthodox” as they like to call the canonical churches that has become distorted.

bbbbbbb said:

My question was in reference to hell. The specific problem that concerned our friend was the apparent unbelief of current Catholic clergy in the doctrine of hell. In your experience in Orthodoxy does doctrine play a significant role?

Click to expand...

I've listened quite a bit to Father Bill Casey (a Catholic priest) over the years who has spoken about hell, here's a sample: