Paul VI’s Role in the Council
Ignored by Mattei

Real Council & Virtual Council? (Series) – III

By: Patrick Odou

As we have seen before (here and here) Roberto de Mattei tries to blame the media, not the Popes, for the disastrous results of Vatican II. Since I have already analyzed many changes made by John XXIII, which Mattei forgot to consider, today I will continue by mentioning significant actions of Paul VI that also furthered the Conciliar Revolution.

2. Paul VI

Council Vatican II (October 11, 1962 - December 8, 1965) occurred under the pontificates of two Popes: John XXIII, and Paul VI. John XXIII convened it and presided over its first session. After the death of Roncalli in 1963, Pope Montini presided over the other three sessions.

So, Paul VI was the Pope who had more influence over the Council, and the one who saw its conclusion. He is responsible before God for the final product called Vatican II. Also, after the closing ceremonies on December 8, 1965, Paul VI would live another 13 active years overseeing the implementation of Vatican II throughout the Church.

Card. Montini in the Council

During the Council, as Archbishop of Milan, the largest Italian Diocese, Montini was in the forefront of the progressivist current. Montini was one of the main proponents of the new Schema XIII for Gaudium et spes on adaptation of the Church to the modern world, which replaced the original Schema. Fr. Chenu explains:

Card. Montini's influence was remarkable in the Council

“Everyone remembers the intervention of Cardinal Suenens at the end of the first session (December 4, 1962), immediately accepted by Cardinals Frings and Montini. Out of a confused agenda he extracted the decisive line of the Council: the Church has to define herself inside herself, but also outside herself in a ‘dialogue’ with the world. This was the launching of the famous Schema XIII, a charismatic shock from which emanates the whole theology of renewal.”

Card. Montini always supported the radical endeavors of Progressivism during the Council.

“After naming Cardinals with whom he met and who supported him – Montini, Döpfner, Lienart, Siri – the Belgian Prelate [Suenens] alludes to the Pontiff’s tacit endorsement of the plan.”

During the Council as Pope Paul VI

As soon as Paul VI was elected, he started to prepare the changes that took place in the Council from the Second Session on. The first was the change in the direction of the debates.

In the First Session the works were directed by the Secretary of the Council, Card. Pericli Felici, a center-left old-style Vatican official, mostly concerned about his career. Paul VI put in eclipse the prior system and established four Moderators to direct and decide everything.

Three of them were Montini’s companions of the radical progressist wing: Cardinals Leo Suenens, Julius Döpfner and Giacomo Lercaro; the fourth one was the conservative Armenian Card. Grégoire-Pierre Agajanian, probably chosen to break the impression among the conservatives that the direction of the Council had been hijacked by the progressivists. Agajanian, by the way, played mostly a protocol role. Almost all the important decisions were made under the direction of the three others, who thus controlled the assembly.
     

Cardinals Suenens, Dopfner & Lercaro

At the same time, Pope Montini gave a new impetus to the action of the progressivist periti in the theological commissions that elaborated the documents. The exponents of the Nouvelle Théologie present in the Council – Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Küng etc – were placed in central positions in order to influence and write the documents. In this way Congar worked on 12 of the final 16 documents; Rahner became the master-mind behind Lumen gentium…

It was during the Fourth Session that Paul VI gave another blow to the 2,000-year consistent position of the Church regarding the State. He went to the United Nations to pay homage to that Masonic institution, to declare his support for the cult of man and to renounce to any possible pretension of the Church to claim temporal territories.

On December 6, 1965, Paul VI established a landmark in the Miserablist Revolution by commanding the Bishops to change their lifestyle and abandon all signs of grandeur.  

In 1965 Paul VI paid a symbolic homage to the U.N.
rejecting the entire past of the Church

He told then that, in the past, “the signs of a Bishop were those of superiority, external riches, honor … In those times, such signs did not give rise to scandal. Then the people liked to admire their Bishop adorned with grandeur, power, riches and majesty.

“Today, however, this is not the case, nor should it be so. Far from admiring, people are surprised and scandalized when a Bishop appears with the signs of those excessive and anachronistic symbols of his dignity … Let us thank God that we have put aside all these worldly and exterior things!”

Just before the closing of the Council, he changed the Holy Office and got rid of the Index of Forbidden Books. This would open the floodgates to every error and evil, and expose the faithful to every heresy.

“On the day before the Council closed, December 7, 1965, Paul VI reformed the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and abolished the Index [of forbidden books] by means of the Motu proprio Integrae servandae. This action was intended to signify establishing freedom of thought and expression inside the Church. "Henceforth, anyone could think, say or write whatever he wanted without fear of anathema. That is to say, everything unorthodox, immoral and dishonorable that has been said and written regarding Holy Mother Church from that time until today was, in effect, permitted by the pontifical authority of Paul VI.”

These are but a few facts that made up part of the enormous agenda Paul VI accomplished during the three last sessions of Vatican II.
 

If we are to believe what Robert de Mattei told his audience in Krakow, all these facts had no influence on the future of the Church. Paul VI was not the dynamo fostering the Conciliar Revolution. The only ones to blame would be the journalists who, in their news reports, misrepresented what the good Popes along with the good Bishops did in the Council.
             

Michael Matt: Another pseudo traditionalist to blame
with this impotent argument of Real vs Virtual Council

Nothing could be further from the reality. The principal agents of the Revolution in the Council were the two Popes. Mattei’s tale is a ridiculous and subservient obliteration of the reality.