While the gale force of the post-conciliar tempest continues to uproot the Faith, dislodge morals, blow apart revered traditions, topple the Church’s edifice, and spread doctrinal debris throughout the Church, there are those who insist that the problem today isn’t due to Vatican II but to a “misinterpretation” of the Council.
Unfortunately, misinterpretation had nothing to do with this, for this revolution was the result of years of careful planning. We might see the Council documents as the blueprint for this plan. The ambiguities, omissions, and outright errors in the documents were deliberately calculated by progressivist theologians and bishops who intended to exploit these errors in the text after the Council closed.
If we have lay people today assuming priestly functions as “Eucharistic ministers,” it’s because Vatican II defines the laity as a “common priesthood.” (Lumen Gentium 10) If the Church today ecumenically dignifies other religions, it’s because Vatican II says that “Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation.” (Unitatis Redintegratio 3) Clearly, there was a plan for change in the works.
Protestants Helped Draft the Documents
According to the preeminent Catholic writer and historian Michael Davies, the ensuing “disease of ecumania” that spread throughout the Church after Vatican II was the “direct result of the presence of Protestant observers at the Second Vatican Council.” In his book on the new Mass, Davies states, “Six Protestant observers were invited to advise this Consilium. They played an active part in the preparation of the new Mass.” (Pope Paul’s New Mass)
Far from being mere observers, these delegates were acting as an advisory board to the Second Vatican Council. Monsignor Baum (later Cardinal Baum), in an interview with the Detroit News on June 27, 1967, commented on the role of these six Protestant participants. “They are not simply there as observers, but as consultants as well, and they participate fully in the discussions on the Catholic liturgical renewal.”
According to Dr. Moorman who headed the Anglican delegation at Vatican II, these participants were able to “make their views known at special weekly meetings of the Unity Secretariat and had personal contacts with the Council fathers.”
Professor Oscar Cullman of the Lutheran delegation summed it up on December 4, 1965: “The hopes of the Protestants for Vatican II have not only been fulfilled, but… have gone far beyond what was believed possible.” (Xavier Rynne, The Fourth Session)
In a book published by Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, one of the Protestant “observers” at Vatican II, he praised the Council’s decree on ecumenism because it acknowledges the ecclesial reality of Protestant assemblies and because it negates the need for non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic Church. (Dr. McAfee Brown, The Ecumenical Revolution)
Cardinal Augustin Bea S.J., who headed the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity, boasted of the contribution made by these Protestant advisors in formulating the conciliar decree on Ecumenism. “I do not hesitate to assert that they have contributed in a decisive way to bringing about this result.”
Professor B. Mondin of the Pontifical Propaganda College for the Missions stated that observers such as Dr. Cullman made “a valid contribution” to drawing up the Council Documents.”
Is it any wonder that Vatican II was instrumental in setting into motion an unprecedented departure from Church tradition? The fact is that professed enemies of the Church were at the helm assisting in the drafting of documents for an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church!
This is not to suggest that the Second Vatican Council wasn’t started with good intentions, but that it was infiltrated through the orchestration of Judases within the Vatican. There is an abundance of documented evidence showing that Vatican II was hijacked in the opening session by rebel bishops because Pope John XXIII had planned the Council without their advice and against their designs.
We gather that Cardinal Tisserant, the key draftsman of the 1962 Moscow-Vatican Treaty who presided at the opening session, was part of this scheme to usurp Vatican II. According to Jean Guitton, the famous French academic and personal friend of Pope Paul VI, Tisserant had showed him a painting of himself and six others, and told him, “This picture is historic, or rather, symbolic. It shows the meeting we had before the opening of the Council when we decided to block the first session by refusing to accept the tyrannical rules laid down by John XXIII.” (Vatican II in the Dock, 2003)
Council Hijacked
Let us digress briefly to recall the turbulent opening session which deflected the course of the Council and set the Bark of Peter on a new and unchartered course that would eventually land it shipwrecked onto secular coasts.
At the center of this coup to overthrow Vatican II were Cardinals Alfrink, Frings, and Liénart of the Rhine Alliance. Their objective was to gain control of the conciliar drafting commissions. A crucial vote was to be taken to determine the members of the commissions when Cardinal Liénart, a suspected Freemason, seized the microphone during a speech and demanded that the slate of 168 candidates be discarded and that a new slate of candidates be drawn up. His uncanny gesture was heeded by the Council and the election was postponed. Liénart’s action deflected the course of the Council and was hailed a victory in the press. The date was October 13, 1962, the 45th Anniversary of Our Lady’s last apparition at Fatima. (Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, The Rhine Flows into the Tiber)
In his February 14, 2013 address to the clergy of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI brilliantly recounts this coup d’ etat at Vatican II: “On the programme for this first day were the elections of the Commissions, and lists of names had been prepared, in what was intended to be an impartial manner, and these lists were put to the vote. But right away the Fathers said: ‘No, we do not simply want to vote for pre-prepared lists. We are the subject.’ Then, it was necessary to postpone the elections, because the Fathers themselves…wanted to prepare the lists themselves. And so, it was. Cardinal Liénart of Lille and Cardinal Frings of Cologne had said publicly: no, not this way. We want to make our own lists and elect our own candidates.”
The preeminent Romano Amerio who had contributed significantly to the drafting of the original Vatican II outline cites how the legal framework of the Council was violated by this act: “This departure from the original plan” came about “by an act breaking the Council’s legal framework” so that “the Council was self-created, atypical, and unforeseen.” (Professor Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, 1985)
After illicitly blocking the vote, this rebellious “Rhine group” resorted to boorish methods to force-install several of their own members onto the drafting commissions, so that from October 16 on, nearly sixty-percent of the commissions were now chaired by “suspect theologians” that previously had been restricted under Pius XII. These would include dissenters like Hans Kung, Schillebeechx, and the pseudo-mystic Karl Rahner, the Council darling, who for the entirety of Vatican II was dating the notorious feminist Luise Rinser who had clamored for abortion and women priests. The enemies of the Faith had captured the key positions of the Council, thus enabling them to draft perfidious documents for the misguiding of the Church, i.e. the 16 documents of Vatican II.
The true conciliar documents were the 72 schemas which John XXIII had approved before the Council. According to Archbishop Lefebvre, who had been appointed to the Central Preparatory Committee for checking all the documents, the schemas were worthy and orthodox, and should have been used, but to his dismay the Rhine fathers illicitly rejected Pope John’s outline after it had been approved through a 40% vote. Consider Lefebvre’s words:
“From the very first days, the Council was besieged by the progressive forces. We experienced it, felt it… We had the impression that something abnormal was happening and this impression was rapidly confirmed; fifteen days after the opening session not one of the seventy-two schemas remained. All had been sent back, rejected, thrown into the waste-paper basket. The immense work that had been found accomplished was scrapped and the assembly found itself empty-handed, with nothing ready…. Yet that is how the Council commenced.” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics)
This vituperative counter-council which warred against the true Council was fueled by a coalition of periti that were Communistic in orientation. One such agent who participated at the Second Vatican Council expressed his horror over the good schemas of John XXIII.
“Hearing that Pope John had appointed a commission to draw the schemas for the forthcoming Council, I immediately started to work on counter-schemas with the help of avant-garde theologians (Rhine fathers) who had been won over to our way of thinking. Thanks to my contacts I managed to obtain copies of the projected papal schemas: they were terrible! I was in a cold sweat! If these schemas are carried, my work of 20 years will have been in vain. I hastily put the finishing touch to my counter-schemas, and I circulated them. Eventually, they were tabled at the Council.” (Marie Carré, AA 1025, Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle)
Pope Benedict XVI himself points out how a “virtual council” had risen up to usurp the “real Council” at Vatican II, lamenting how “it created so many disasters, so many problems, so much suffering: seminaries closed, convents closed, banal liturgy.” (Speaking to the clergy of Rome, February 14, 2013)
Romano Amerio summed up the situation perfectly: “A distinctive feature of Vatican II is its paradoxical outcome, by which all the preparatory work that usually directs the debates, marks the outlook and foreshadows the results of a council, was nullified and rejected from the first session onward.”
Historic Coup d’etat at Vatican II
On October 13, 1962, Cardinal Achille Liénart of France deflected the course of the Council and made history when during a speech he seized the microphone and demanded that they halt the vote needed to furnish the conciliar drafting commissions. His demand was acceded to and hailed a victory in the press, thus allowing the progressives of the Rhine coalition to rise up and take control of the Council’s drafting apparatus. This enabled them to scrap the Pope’s plans for Vatican II and to draft a new plan of their own, thereby giving birth to the modernist “reform.” Liénart reportedly confessed on his deathbed that he was a Freemason, which would explain his illicit intervention. The preeminent Romano Amerio who had contributed significantly to the drafting of the original Vatican II outline cites how the legal framework of the Council was violated right from the onset: “This departure from the original plan” came about “by an act breaking the Council’s legal framework” so that “the Council was self-created, atypical, and unforeseen.” (Professor Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, 1985)
Hence it is conceivable that the Council at this point—on account of two violations against its legal framework, i.e. the illicit rejection of the candidates for the commissions and the illicit rejection of the 72 schemas that had been legitimately approved—had gone from being a valid council to a revolution. The fruits of the Council certainly suggest this. Can we honestly say that even one conversion to the Faith resulted from Vatican II?
It was for reason that Pope Paul VI lamented the outcome of the Council at its close, saying, “Profane and secular humanism has revealed itself in its terrible, anticlerical stature, and in one sense has defied the Council. The religion of God made man has met the religion of man who makes himself God.” (December 7, 1965)
The Holy Father also said in 1970: “In many areas the Council has not so far given us peace but rather stirred up troubles and problems that in no way serve to strengthen the Kingdom of God within the Church or within its souls.”
It was for reason that the pope on June 29, 1972 let out with his historic S.O.S. as to why Vatican II failed.
“From some fissure the smoke of Satan entered into the temple of God.”
Interestingly, Cardinal Ratzinger in summer 2000 allegedly told his friend Fr. Ingo Dollinger—a close friend and spiritual child of St. Padre Pio—that the Third Secret of Fatima spoke of “a bad council and a bad Mass” to come, presumably referencing the Second Vatican Council. (One Peter Five, May 15, 2016)
Needless to say, Vatican II was an infernally precipitated disaster which sent the Church floundering into turbulent straits. Far from being the work of God that was simply misinterpreted, the Council was a carefully calculated revolution that was later implemented according to plan.
But some argue that Vatican II incorporates elements of dogma and orthodoxy into its documents, which it does, but it does so in such a way that these elements are now seen in the light of the Council instead of in the light of tradition. What Vatican II did was to provide a new lens wherewith to look at the Church and it deliberately retained elements of orthodoxy to alter our understanding of it while at the same time using these elements as exterior cover to give the Council an air of legitimacy. Archbishop Lefebvre explains:
“The good texts [of the Council] have served as cover to get those texts which are snares, equivocal, and denuded of meaning, accepted and passed.” (I Accuse the Council, 1998)
Hence, the display of orthodoxy and error side by side served to sell the novel teachings while giving innovators a chance to place a new spin on the old teachings, and thus advance the denial thereof.
Fr. Linus Clovis, who is a leading conservative voice in the Catholic Church today, points out how this insidious ploy to advance error under the cloak of goodness was in the works even before the Second Vatican Council.
“In Auctorem Fidei, Pius VI noted that innovators, to insinuate their errors, hide subtleties in seemingly innocuous words allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying a statement, or of leaving its meaning up to an individual’s personal inclination. Celestine I observed that Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with obscure ones; at times, intermingling one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very things which he confessed.
“The modernist innovators, having deceived the overly optimistic John XXIII, seized power at the opening session and replaced the orthodox preparatory schemas with their own ambiguous documents, whereby to feign profession of orthodoxy while at the same time possessing a means of denying the very orthodoxy which they purported to confess, and hence was born the revolution that is Vatican II.” (Fr. Linus F. Clovis Ph.D, JCL, M.Sc. STB, Dip.Ed.)