Overview

Twenty centuries after its foundation, Catholicism has undergone an immense reversal. The new directions of Vatican II do not by themselves explain the unprecedented crisis the Church is experiencing today. Yet the Council was the point of departure for what, in theological, liturgical, and pastoral terms, became a far-reaching upheaval-touching clerical and religious life, as well as missions and vocations. Sixty years later, Claude Barthe revisits this decisive moment and the history that led to it. He describes a gradual seizure of doctrinal influence by the proponents of modernism and the new theology, and argues that the Council-marked by omissions, adjustments, and significant ambiguities, and far from monolithic in character-opened the door to pluralism and, with it, to the relativism that shapes the present situation. This occurred both through the non-dogmatic form of its teaching and through an ecumenical approach that, in a broad sense, granted a certain legitimacy to a diversity of religious belief. This work belongs to the ongoing reassessment of Vatican II that began in the early 1980s, gathered force under Benedict XVI, and met a sharp reversal under Pope Francis. Barthe places the Council within a much longer history, tracing the currents of Catholic thought from the nineteenth century-when the Church first confronted the political and intellectual legacy of the French Revolution-to the modernist crisis and its aftermath.

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Reviews

""Fr. Claude Barthe has long been known in France for his level-headed, sagacious evaluation of the state of the contemporary Catholic Church and for his pellucid and persuasive defense of liturgical tradition. In this feisty work, now thankfully available in English, he shows how historical forces born in an age of revolutions culminated in abject surrender to the Zeitgeist, and how true reform is possible only through acknowledging and overcoming the many-sided rupture between Catholicism's past and present. If you're tired of cant and sugarcoating, this electrifying tonic is for you.""-PETER KWASNIEWSKI, author of Bound by Truth ""Abbé Claude Barthe here examines what he provocatively calls 'a council that abdicated its responsibilities, ' and argues that the Church's pragmatic accommodations to the modern world, culminating in the conciliar aggiornamento, have had corrosive and seriously damaging effects on her theology and faith. Exercising the parrhesia that Pope Francis often called for, he persuasively makes the historical and theological case that the 'pastoral' nature of Vatican II sowed seeds of ambiguity, division, and rupture-not just in its implementation through religious pluralism, ecumenism, and the liturgy of the Novus Ordo, but at a fundamental level in its texts. As the Second Vatican Council increasingly recedes into history, Abbé Barthe's book points to a way out from the failures of the modern Church and to a way of resolving the current crisis-MATTHEW HAZELL, author of Index Lectionum ""With boldness, clarity, and precision, Barthe exposes the nature and origin of today's crisis in the Catholic Church. Writing from a traditionalist perspective, he identifies Vatican II as the turning point at which modernism and ecumenism triumphed. He guides the reader through the history of ideological conflict from the nineteenth century onward, including a behind-the-scenes account of the political struggles that led to the unprecedented doctrinal and liturgical reforms of Vatican II, and argues persuasively that the result was nothing less than the introduction of new theology-and the greatest detriment to the very mission of the Church.""-EDWARD NAUMANN, editor and translator of Nicholas of Lyra, Literal Commentary on Galatians

Author Information

ABBÉ CLAUDE BARTHE (b. 1947) is the author of numerous works on the current crisis of the Church and of articles in various journals commenting on religious affairs. He has devoted particular attention to defending and elucidating the ""genius"" of the traditional Roman liturgy.

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