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Entry: A Silence That Speaks Volumes Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/a_silence_that_speaks_volumes#7958 Post contents: Well said Mr. Richert, and I believe your perceptive analysis, and Hitchcock and Neuhaus's attempted excommunication point to an underlying scandal. For many years after the disastrous implementation of Vatican II, in the face of the manifest apostasy of much of the Church in North America and Europe, a "conservative" Catholic establishment arose in the vacuum left by the episcopal hierarchy faced with open dissent and liturgical abuse. This establishment served to assure many Catholics that Vatican II was just fine, and the catastrophic developments in the west were merely manifestations of an improper implementation. In doing this, many of these "conservative" Catholics, many of whom, life Fr. Neuhaus and Michael Novak, were former liberals, and still are in the proper sense of the term, substituted their own understanding of what the "proper implementation of Vatican II" was, generally amended to encompass their own pet peeves with the "preconciliar" Church. For example, Dignitatis Humanae was interpreted to have rescinded the syllabus of errors. Gaudium et Spes was interpreted to have contradicted Testem Benevolentiae, and Sacrosanctum Concilium was interpreted as, if not a correction of Quo Primum, at least a vital suppression of the preconciliar liturgical ethos. The fact that the Conservatives decried the full scale revolt after Vatican II served to secure their position, and in many cases their livelihood as an alternative Magisterial authority, give the Episcopal hierarchy's abdication of that role. In fact, this alternate hierarchy has a symbiotic relationship with the clearly decrepit actual western hierarchy, because the latter's refusal or inability to do anything about the doctrinal and liturgical abuse, and their "preoccupations" would naturally lead to criticism and perhaps even repudiation, were not some semblance of public criticism made. Not to say this is a conspiracy, but the Conservative Catholic "establishment" does a service to the abdicating authorities by keeping the criticism of those authorities within bounds. In this light we can see Fr. Neuhaus's early assurances about the scandal of sexual abuse in the hierarchy as really about "Fidelity, Fidelity, Fidelity" and most definitely not about homosexuality. And one of the main deceptions this movement (in so much as it is one) has perpetrated is the notion that Vatican II and John Paul II amended Catholic Social Teaching in favor of Democracy and Capitalism. Sent at: 2008 07 09