For the past month, the laity in the Church have vented their anger over the explosion of sexual abuse allegations that surround former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the accompanying failure of his brother bishops to stop his abuse or curtail his rise to power and prominence in the Church. The statements that have come out from the bishops that surround this crisis, are to me weak, pathetic, and devoid of any sense of responsibility. And they continue to be devoid of any self-awareness, accountability, or responsibility (just listen to Cardinal Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor in DC, say that he doesn’t think it is a massive crisis and calls it a “terrible disappointment” — good grief man, are you kidding me?)

Cardinal Wuerl and Fr. Rosica are not as reassuring as they intend to be in this clip. pic.twitter.com/rXbuaEeQ0G

— Matthew Schmitz (@matthewschmitz) August 10, 2018

It is impossible to defend the indefensible and matters are made worse when those bishops who were closest to McCarrick say they were shocked — shocked mind you, that this could happen — saying that they had no idea that any of this was going on and issuing statements asking what more could have been done to protect the People of God. The bishops have lost all credibility in my mind. This is not only a moral failure, but it is a failure of leadership, a failure of these men to shepherd their people, and a failure of these men to admit the root cause of this horrific scandal:

Homosexual acts committed by or between clerics—even among those presumably able to consent—are at the root, the very root, of the sexual misconduct and cover-up crisis exposed by the McCarrick scandal. Who on earth does not yet know that yet?

Amidst all this I was surprised to read this article by George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington DC’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, and noted Catholic commentator. He writes about this year’s 25th anniversary of World Youth Day in Denver, CO, where about 700,000 young Catholics gathered to see and hear Pope John Paul II proclaim the Gospel. Weigel writes that JP2 challenged that crowd at the papal mass in Mile High Stadium with these words:

Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places, like the first apostles who preached Christ and the good news of salvation in the squares of cities, towns, and villages. This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel.… It is the time to preach it from the rooftops.

Weigel writes that what he calls the triumph of WYD93 was not only a triumph for JP2 and the organizers for the event but that it was a turning point for the Church in the USA:

Before WYD 1993, too much of Catholicism in America was in a defensive crouch, like too much of the Church in Western Europe today. After WYD 1993, the New Evangelization in the United States got going in earnest, as Catholics who had participated in it brought home the word that the Gospel was still the most transformative force in the world. Before WYD 1993, U.S. Catholicism was largely an institutional-maintenance Church. With WYD 1993, Catholicism in America discovered the adventure of the New Evangelization, and the living parts of the Church in the U.S. today are the parts that have embraced that evangelical way of being Catholic.

He paints a rosy picture but is he right?

Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of aggiornamento or modernization — a throwing open of the doors of the Church in a desire to dialogue with the outside world. Perhaps the New Evangelization was meant to flow from this (although it seems that PJP2 thought it necessary because of the decline in the Church since the Council). When one compares the statistics of the number of priests, religious sisters and brothers, reception of the sacraments, and church attendance to the total Catholic population from 1995 to now, the picture is grim.

A taste with a comparison of 1995/2017:

• Catholics: 57.4M/68.5M
• Parishes: 19,331/17,1567
• Priests: 49,054/37,181
• Seminarians: 3172/3405 (some good news!)
• Baptisms: 981,444/660,367
• Former Catholics: 17.3M/30.0M

I have to say we are back in a defensive crouch big-time with the continuing scandal of predatory homosexual clerics in the Church, the doctrinal confusion that emanates from Rome, the lack of belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (up to 40% of Catholics), the declining numbers for mass attendance, and the absolute failure of the bishops to protect the flock. Based on this, how can one proclaim the New Evangelization — prioritized towards lapsed and lukewarm Catholics, anything other than an utter failure?

Perhaps Vatican Council 2 has gone past it’s sell-by date and we need to stop using that Council as a reference for the Church. As Fr. Hugh writes:

(V2) described itself as a pastoral council, and it sought to repackage the teaching, life and worship of the Church to suit a world in flux. For this very reason the Council was necessarily going to have a best-before date. That date has been passed. The sad thing is that its milk turned sour very soon after packaging.

As Fr. Hugh notes, and the statistics above confirm, “Catholic vitality has plummeted” in the post-conciliar years. And as the Liturgy Guy writes:

If one still disputes this they cannot be taken seriously and should step away from the grown up table; these discussions aren’t for you.

Fr. Hugh again:

By any reasonable standard of judgment the application of the Council failed, miserably, to achieve the Council’s aims. This statistical revelation of decline is quite apart from the decline experienced by Catholics as they have seen dogmas, doctrines, morals and many other elements of Catholic life thrown into chaos in the wake of the Council. St John Paul II and Benedict XVI, in their different ways and according to their lights, attempted to stem the ecclesial wasting away. But while ever the main nutrition of the Church was based on the Council (usually very loosely) then the Church will ever be gaining a pound a losing two.

When one looks back and reads in Gaudium et Spes (the document that was most associated with aggiornamento), that “love of God and neighbor is the first and greatest commandment” (GS24), and that “man is the source, the center, and the purpose of all economic and social life” (GS63), one reads statements that clearly contradict the words of Jesus Christ. And if one looks back to the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae, and the subsequent liturgical abuses that followed from this, one sees a clear break with the tradition of the Church and the dereliction of the duty of the Pope to protect this tradition.

But as Fr. Hugh points out and it is obvious to one who will look, the decline is not universal:

The Church grows apace in the developing world, where a different social and attitudinal dynamic is at work. The Church is growing in the West in certain places too. But here’s the rub: it is growing precisely where much of what was discarded by the post-conciliaristas is slowly and sensibly being reclaimed and integrated into the world of 2017 rather than the mid-1960s. What they are reclaiming is essential, timeless Catholicism rather than the tired mantras and shibboleths of the “Vatican II Church”. The young have discovered, and many of the older re-discovered, that there was a Church before Vatican II, and it was healthy, vital and beautiful.

V2 proclaimed itself a pastoral council. Pastoral actions, unlike doctrine, are not timeless. I will admit that I have for many years pounded the table and said that if only the council was implemented as the Fathers wanted all would be good. But I have come to realize that this is like the Progressives who say that if only socialism or communism was implemented properly all would be good. Fr. Hugh:

So, despite the many virtues of the Council documents, and some (of) its beautiful passages of theological lyricism, they are so laden with deliberate ambiguities, and have been so abused and misrepresented in their application, that are fit only for the occasional reference or quotation. They addressed too specifically a world that disappeared soon after the Council; Gaudium et speswas flawed even then, but now it reads almost risibly.

Thus it makes no sense to be constantly referencing every contemporary initiative to Vatican II, for justification or acceptance-value. It is time to move from a post-conciliar Church to a post-post-conciliar Church; which is to say, it is time to reclaim the Church as She has always been in her essence and her stable form, which has been able to function viably and vitally in every age and circumstance since the time of Christ. In the 1960s mankind, not least of the Catholic variety, seemed to think it had found something new under the sun. How old, dated and desiccated that new thing now looks.

It may seem silly or outrageous to you to blame the crisis in the Church today on the Second Vatican Council. But for me, it is time to move on and move back to regaining the history and tradition of our Church, and not use as a point of reference and foundation the most recent Council in the history of the Church. And my jumping off point for this is to avoid whenever possible the Novus Ordo mass and attend the Usus Antiquior mass.

To finish, I will point you to an article from a priest who gets the anger that so many are full of today. Monsignor Charles Pope writes:

I am grateful that many lay faithful love the Church enough to be angry. Sometimes one must be angry enough to be willing to act for change and to persevere in that work. I hope you will honor your anger and use it to creative ends: to tirelessly demand real reform in all the ways God gives you to see. Be careful to target your anger and speak it in love and for the good of all.

So, this is a crucial moment for God’s people. As a member of His clergy, I want to say that we need you now more than ever and to remind you that you will be essential to reform by insisting on it and refusing to accept a return to business as usual. Let us pray for one another and work for the reform we all know is necessary and long overdue.