Look What I'm Missing!

That's the trouble with trying to get to all corners of St. Blog's. I miss good stuff like this!

Tom has an interesting insight on the Spirit of Vatican II--both the "movement" and the man:

What I realized -- an obvious insight in hindsight -- is that, for some people, the term "Vatican II" refers to experiences during a fixed period of time, while for others it refers to a set of documents.

So Teófilo is talking past Fr. O'Leary by asking questions about reading documents. For Fr. O'Leary, "Vatican II" isn't only -- and likely enough not even principally -- about what documents say. The "spirit" he speaks of isn't a poor paraphrase of the documents; it's not like the "spirit of the law" contrasted with the "letter of the law." It's a Zeitgeist, not an, um, Wortgeist. The conciliar documents are a record of that Zeitgeist, from this perspective, but not the only record, and in fact, the memories of the Zeitgeist, whether original or transferred to a later generation, are seen as just as authoritative as the documents, indeed the context in which the documents are to be read.

So when anti-"spirit of Vatican II" folks write cuttingly, "Read the documents! You won't find what those 'spirit of Vatican II' folks are saying in the documents!," the "spirit of Vatican II" folks may well reply, "Exactly!"

This approach would fit with Fr. O'Leary's knack for finding the Christ of Faith in a person's subjective "encounter" with God through the historical Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, in both cases, Fr. O'Leary has developed his own context in which the legitimacy of doctrines on Christ or Ecumenical councils may be held. Thus, unless people validate this context in dialogue with him, The Spirit of Vatican II will just dismiss them.

Rather sad behavior from an ordained priest. Unfortunately, it's far from unique to just Fr. O'Leary. Fortunately, the NeoCath generation is having none of it. Thus, The Spirit of Vatican II begins to imitate the mouth-foaming of his more Reasonable role models and manipulators. Wet Carpet. Broom. Outside. Sooner or later; in the case of the NeoCaths, sooner, I'd say.