We hear much of the continuity of Vatican II with tradition these days, especially in light of pending discussions with the SSPX. Even His Holiness likes to press the point, using a Bill-Buckley-sized word, "hermeneutic." It's a pleasant idea, that V-II conserves tradition, except for the practical impossibility of demonstrating such a thing, and even more, the fact that before his elevation, Cardinal Ratzinger himself emphatically declared the opposite.
Let's take a closer look at the supposed continuity, first through the eyes of Cardinal Ratzinger, and then through the eyes of a post-Vatican-II Catholic, namely yourself, as you look back at the teaching of Pope Gregory XVI. While there are many examples of Fathers extolling the dramatic change wrought at the Council, such as Cardinal Suenens who exclaimed, “Vatican II is the French Revolution in the Church” (here), we find in Cardinal Ratzinger the most authoritative descriptions. The teaching of Gregory XVI serves as a "contrast agent," if you will, providing sound traditional doctrine, as well as proof that Pope Pius IX didn't invent the teachings in his Syllabus of Errors. The contrast in both voice and thinking vis-à-vis Vatican II might even be shocking to most Catholics today.
The text from Cardinal Ratzinger concerns the Syllabus of Errors of Ven. Pope Pius IX. He is quite opposed to the Syllabus, as well as the syllabus of the Biblical Commission under Pope St. Pius X. Hear the Cardinal proclaim Vatican II to be the "counter Syllabus," taken from his book Principles of Catholic Theology:
If one is looking for a global diagnosis of the text [of Gaudium et Spes], one could say that it (in connection with the texts on religious liberty and the world’s religions) is a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter-Syllabus. As is known, Harnack interpreted the “Syllabus” of Pius IX as a challenge to its century; what is true is that it drew a line of separation before the determining forces of the nineteenth century: the scientific and political conceptions of liberalism. In the modernist controversy, this double border was once again reinforced and fortified.
Undoubtedly, many things have changed since then. The new ecclesiastical policy of Pius IX established a certain openness toward the liberal conception of State. In a silent but persevering combat, exegesis and Church history increasingly adopted the postulates of liberal science; on the other hand, liberalism was obliged, facing the great political upheavals of the twentieth century, to accept notable corrections. This happened because, first in central Europe, conditioned by the situation, the unilateral dependence in relation to the positions taken by the Church on the initiative of Pius IX and Pius X against the new period of history opened by the French Revolution was to a large extent corrected via facti; but a new, fundamental determination of relations with the world as it had been since 1789 was still lacking.
Actually, in the countries with strong Catholic minorities, the mentality that preceded the revolution still reigned; today no one denies that for a long time this no longer corresponded to reality. Likewise, almost no one can deny that this dependence on an obsolete conception of relations between Church and State was matched by similar anachronisms in the domain of education and the attitude to be taken vis-à-vis the modern historic-critical method. Only a detailed research about the several ways in which the parts of the Church welcomed the modern world could undo the complicated entanglement of causes that contributed to give shape to the pastoral constitution, and only in this way could the drama of the history of its influence be clarified. Let us content ourselves here with finding that the text plays the role of a counter-Syllabus to the degree that it represents an official attempt by the Church at reconciliation with the world as it became after 1789. On the one hand, this visualization alone clarifies the ghetto complex of which we spoke in the beginning; on the other hand, it alone permits us to understand the meaning of the strange relationship of the Church with the world: by “world” one understands, at depth, the spirit of modern times. The group consciousness in the Church felt separated from this spirit and looked for dialogue and cooperation with it after the hot war and the cold war [were over].
It is easy to demonstrate that the Syllabus is the culmination of the continuous teaching of many popes. Are we to believe that Vatican II is preserving this continuity while at the same time countering it? Continuing on the Syllabus, Cardinal Ratzinger, in seconding von Balthasar's goal of "demolition the bastions" of the Church, declares "there can be no return to the Syllabus" (here). How can there be "no return" unless there has been a departure? Additionally, he had the audacity to declare the magisterial teachings of Popes Pius IX and X "provisional" (here). Might it be that Vatican II is also "provisional?" And what of Pope Benedict's hermeneutics? (For articles on the Syllabus click here and here.)
The encyclical Mirari Vos of Pope Gregory XVI was issued in 1832, about 40 years after blood-thirsty terrorists slaughtered princes, priests and nuns in France. Napoleon had imprisoned one of his predecessors, and revolutionaries had taken the Papal States by force. After the rebellion was crushed by Papal troops with Austrian help (no. 3, below), Gregory was able to issue his first letter to the bishops. In it, he defends his temporal authority (3), condemns liberty of conscience (15) and of the press (16), extols submission to princes (25), and condemns separation of Church and State (26). Squaring all this with Vatican II would be a challenge for even the most talented hermeneutist.
3. At the sight of such stubbornness on the part of men whose unbridled fury, far from relaxing, seemed only envenomed and increased by too long impurity and by the manifestation of Our paternal indulgence, We have been compelled, though with a soul crushed with grief, to use the authority committed to Us by God, and arrest them by the rod of severity.
6. We speak to you, Venerable Brethren, of evils which you behold with your own eyes, and which We consequently, in common, deplore. Perversity, science without modesty, unbridled license are at work, full of ardor and of insolence. The sanctity of the mysteries excites nothing but contempt; and the majesty of the divine worship, that power which the mind of man can neither resist nor dispense with, has become for perverse men an object of censure, profanation, and sacrilegious derision. ... Thus when the sacred bonds of religion are once contemptuously cast aside, bonds which alone preserve kingdoms and maintain the power and vigor of authority, public order is seen to disappear, sovereignty perish, and all legitimate power menaced by an ever-approaching revolution—abyss of bottomless miseries, which these conspiring societies have especially dug, in which heresy and sects have, so to speak, vomited, as in a sewer, all that their bosom holds of license, sacrilege, and blasphemy.
8. This you [bishops] will do perfectly if you watch over yourselves and your doctrine, as your office makes it your duty, repeating incessantly to yourselves that every novelty attempts to undermine the Universal Church, and that, according to the warning of the holy Pope Agatho, “nothing that has been regularly defined can bear diminution, or change, or addition, and repels every alteration of sense, or even of words.”
14. We now come to another and most fruitful cause of the evils which at present afflict the Church and which We so bitterly deplore; We mean indifferentism, or that fatal opinion everywhere diffused by the craft of the wicked, that men can by the profession of any faith obtain the eternal salvation of their souls, provided their life conforms to justice and probity.
15. From this poisoned source of indifferentism flows that false and absurd, or rather extravagant, maxim that liberty of conscience should be established and guaranteed to each man—a most contagious error, to which leads that absolute and unbridled liberty of opinion which for the ruin of Church and State spreads over the world, ... experience attests, and the remotest antiquity teaches, that cities powerful in wealth, dominion, and glory perished by this sole evil—the unbridled liberty of opinions, the license of public discourse, the passion for changes.
16. With this is blended the liberty of the press—the most fatal liberty, an execrable liberty, for which there never can be sufficient horror, and which certain men dare so loudly and earnestly to demand and extend everywhere.
25. These striking examples of constant submission to princes necessarily had their source in the holiest precepts of the Christian religion, and condemn the perversity and detestable insolence of those who, burning with unbridled and irregular passion for a liberty that dares everything, employ their whole strength to overthrow and destroy all the rights of sovereign authority under the appearances of liberty.
26. We could not argue happier results for religion and the civil power from the desires of those who so ardently demand the separation of Church and State, and the rupture of concord between the priesthood and the empire. For it is an established fact that all the votaries of the most unbridled liberty fear more than all else this concord, which has always been so salutary and so happy for Church and State.
29. Moreover, may the princes, Our dearest sons in Christ, favor with their power and authority the wishes We form with them for the prosperity of religion and the States, and think that their power has been given them, not only for the government of the world, but especially for the support and defense of the Church. Let them seriously consider that all that is undertaken for the salvation of the Church is also undertaken for their repose and the maintenance of their authority. Nay, more, let them be convinced that the cause of faith should be far dearer to them than that of their kingdom, and that their greatest interest, We say it with Pope Saint Leo, is to see the crown of faith added to their diadem by the hand of the Lord. Set up as fathers and guardians of the nations, they will secure their true and constant happiness, with peace and plenty, if they make it their principal care to make religion flourish with piety towards God, Who bears written on His thigh: “King of kings, Lord of lords.”
Pray the Rosary every day. Pray for Pope Benedict.
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