A newspaper with a very large circulation, such as Folha de S. Paulo, will inevitably have readers affiliated with a wide range of opinion currents. I use the term “public opinion” in a very broad sense, encompassing political, social, economic, philosophical, and religious issues. Today, the barriers that liberalism and positivism once built between these different fields are breaking down. Public opinion is becoming more aware of the subtle yet important connections between these areas. To today’s people, it is increasingly clear that taking a stance in sociology or economics logically involves accepting similar positions in politics and morality. That is, implicitly, in philosophy or even in religion.
There is a divergence in that opinions are becoming more polarized, especially among young people. For example, the vast majority of young people half a century ago were secular, liberal, and yet conservative. That is, they strongly supported maintaining the secular and liberal state then in place. At most, one or two among them, isolated and called dreamers, showed sympathy for European revolutionaries or reactionaries. In 1921, energetic and lively movements at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum—such as the TFPs in South America and the hippie neo-subversion—would have been completely unimaginable. However, now they exist, and this illustrates the divergence.
As differences of opinion grow wider, a convergence of various issues is emerging in the public mind. Everyone is beginning to see that all issues are like communicating vessels. Although they are truly diverse, they all connect, intertwine, and form part of a larger common pool.
Considering this dual phenomenon, I think readers might be interested in taking a test. I will present a series of texts on very broad topics, specifically highlighting their interrelation. All these texts are from a single book written by one author. Readers can then decide for themselves—or for me, if they prefer—what they think of the texts and the author. In the following article, I will provide the exact quotations.
The questions are: 1) In the reader’s opinion, do these texts interpret the thinking of Paul VI and the Second Vatican Council well or poorly? 2) Is their author a “bold” progressive, jubilant with the hopes he sees or imagines blossoming in the “Conciliar Church”? 3) Does the reader consider the picture of the “Conciliar Church” as outlined by the author to be objective?
Much of the interest in the answers stems from the fact that they help the reader better understand themselves.
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Let us look at the first text:
“It would be naive to believe that ecclesiastical institutions, parishes, educational and welfare initiatives, religious orders, etc., can truly be reformed according to the conciliar directives without the cost of a genuine social revolution. Naturally, the generation formed before the Council will not be able to carry out such reforms. These efforts will fall on Christians born after 1945. They will see that changes of a more purely ‘pastoral’ nature will require numerous shifts in attitude across economic, social, and political spheres, making a revolution unavoidable.”
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Let us examine another topic:
“It is well known that the (Vatican II) Council was needed to restore and teach the true doctrine of St. Thomas on the universal destination of goods and the rights of the poor. Previous encyclicals still upheld the divine right of private property. Was this because the theologians advising Leo XIII and his successors were distracted? In any case, such a distraction served the interests of the bourgeoisie very well. The neglect of St. Thomas’s true doctrine, resulting from a misreading of his text, was timely.”
“At the same time, however, because of the policy of Concordats with fascist states, Pius XI and Pius XII obliged Catholics to submit to Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Salazar. …
“This is why the conciliar transformations include revolutionary principles. It’s about redefining the relationship between the Church and society in a completely new way.
“The (Council’s) decision not to include a new condemnation of communism, requested by many bishops, signals a desire to redefine the relationship between the Church and social classes.”
Now, let’s read these additional assertions:
“However, the changes required by this renewal (imposed by the Council on the Church) are such that they are necessarily connected to a social revolution. On one hand, these changes in the Church depend on changes in society, as society will not allow them to happen on their own. On the other hand, such changes in the Church would have significant effects on the balance of social forces. Both processes are therefore linked. Increasingly, when obstacles to conciliar renewal appear, it becomes clear that the Council involves deep economic and material shifts, even if it did not expect them … (Many conciliar priests) did not fully realize how much the practical implementation of the conciliar decrees would, in fact, require embracing this spirit of poverty to effectively distinguish the Church’s historical identity from the traditional ruling classes, its long-standing allies, and especially from the current Western system, confident in its material achievements and power.”
Let us consider this other passage:
“A third reason why Catholics were able to accept counterrevolutionary theory easily is the traditional alliance between the clergy and the ruling classes in a Church where decisions are made solely by the clergy. …The clergy relies on the support of the ruling classes to reach and guide the masses. The appeal to the people and the poor is a minority and even an exceptional phenomenon in the Church of the 19th and 20th centuries. …
“Who, at that moment, witnessed the Christian message for our time? Only small minorities—suffering and often silenced voices, voices of laypeople, frequently detached from the official Church, rejected by it.
“That is why we cannot consider the statements made under such circumstances as genuine or definitive documents of Christianity in the face of revolutions. They no longer hold any value considering Vatican II and the renewed Church of today.”
In other words, I would add that the Second Vatican Council has revoked many papal documents that were previously considered “authentic and definitive” (how can we not see in these words a reference to papal documents?), and in the “Conciliar Church,” they now belong in the trash can.
Here are the texts. If the reader is interested, he can now take the test.
