Talk:Spirit of Vatican II

"Incorrect Sources"

A text named "The Masonic Plan for the destruction of the Catholic Church" is listed in reference to "conservative" catholics critisism of Vatican II. Such reference is completely out of context, the material makes no reference to the points provided and appears to be unauthentic. (DCGMX)

"Orthodoxy"

In the spirit (sorry) of WP:BRD, I will not revert to Platia's edits, but I think them an improvement. There seems some confusion here as to confounding "conservative" with "othodoxy" (and perhaps its two antonyms with each other). The spirit has very little to do with orthodoxy -- most business done was approved with overwhelming margins -- and is likely do to an Americentric bias towards those words. The major point of the spirit was that there was less canon and decree and more pastoral persuasion. It was a matter of tone, not topic.

Anyway, this article is young. I appreciate the effort gone into it so far. We'll get this right eventually. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Baccyak. I noticed ADM's reversal much earlier but, not wanting to enter an edit war, decided to come back to this later and then try to undertake the uphill task of arguing with ADM about his idea, expressed in his edit summary as well as in his reversal, that Catholics are made up exclusively of three classes:

• Traditionalists, who think the Church has gone down the drain.
• Liberals, the vast majority, who are in favour of casting aside the Church's teaching, though this teaching is clearly expressed in its official documents.
• Conservatives, a small minority who are disturbed at some abuses committed by the Liberals, but agree with the Traditionalists that "new and arguably unCatholic elements" have been introduced into the celebration of the Mass; these Conservatives form a small minority that happens, just happens, to include the Pope, a man who could almost be classified as a Traditionalist, but for the (alleged) fact that he supports secularism.

That is not the Catholic Church that I know. Nor is it the Benedict XVI that I know. I never thought anyone would classify as a supporter of secularism someone who so strongly speaks against the imposition on culture of a "dictatorship of relativism". Platia (talk) 19:00, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

When I wrote Conservatives, I did not mean Orthodox, since I agree with Baccyak4H that it is more of a pastoral debate that involves a good deal of intellectual persuasion. Also, if you carefully re-read Dignitatis Humanae, you'll see that it does in fact support a fairly mild form of secularism, and that this support of Church-State separation is really at the heart of the dispute between Traditionalists and Conservatives. ADM (talk) 21:19, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

@ Platia, to be fair to ADM, that trichotomy was inherited from the parent article on the Council, and furthermore does reflect to some extent distinctions used (often excessively) by (mostly Western) journalists to describe nearly everything they touch, let alone Church matters. But of course there are better distinctions: the quadrachotomy of S European / N European / third world / Orthodox (capital "C") Churches is far more intellectually useful model, with the singular distinctions of patriarchal/collegial and introspective/"extrospective" also better labels to describe spectra of opinions, with a shift for both towards the latter being hallmarks of the Council's spirit. ADM's Church/State separation nuances were also important, although not throughout as much of the proceedings.

@ ADM, I did not understand your first sentence (although of course am glad we found agreement with something). The church/state point is good and noted. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 03:07, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Spirit of Vatican II

I have for now left unchanged ADM's text about the "legacy of the Second Vatican Council", a much broader concept than that of the "spirit of Vatican II"; but I have added some matter directly concerned with the topic indicated in the title of the article. Platia (talk) 18:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I, for one, do not mind those changes. ADM (talk) 21:04, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with subsections under "Spirit of Vatican II"?

No explanation has been given for removing the subsection headings about the "Spirit of Vatican II". Nor has any explanation been given for undoing a format correction in the same section. Platia (talk) 19:20, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't really intend to remove the subsections, it was most likely an accident, since I was just criticizing the term mainstream Catholic, for which I left a message in your talk page. [1] ADM (talk) 20:53, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Spirit and legacy

Discussion of the "spirit of Vatican II" is distinct from discussion of the legacy or effects of the Council. The two should be kept distinct. The mixing up of the two will have to be undone, unless well defended. Would it not be better to find sources to support the questioned division of all Catholics into three exclusive categories rather than thus confusing the discussion? Platia (talk) 04:41, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Although I accept this distinction, it seems that the people who were blamed for the mixed results of the Council in the 1970s were really the same individuals who had been leading and animating the assemblies from the 1962-1965 period. For instance, Leo Joseph Suenens was one of the leading voices behind Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, but at the same time he was perhaps the most high-profile dissident against the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. In this perspective, the Zeitgeist never really did die out and and was carried on by people like Suenens until their deaths in the 1990s. ADM (talk) 06:43, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

"Spirit of Vatican II" is a more restricted topic than the topic of the aftermath of the Council. Those who used the term "spirit of Vatican II" doubtless said many other things too, but those other things should be dealt with in quite separate articles or at least in sections of this article that are not about the phrase "spirit of Vatican II": first "spirit of Vatican II"; then perhaps, but only perhaps, associated questions. (Your views on Suenens do not seem to have much relevance to this distinction, which you admit exists and which should not be befuddled. May I add that it will soon be a full month since you were asked to support with a valid source your suggestion about a tripartite division that is supposed to cover all Catholics.) Platia (talk) 12:49, 10 June 2009 (UTC)