When
conciliar teaching precluded such deviant “reforms,” an appeal to “the spirit
of Vatican II” was made by the defectors. Religious themselves were sent to
seminars, conferences, and think-tanks which pressured them to abandon
hierarchical structures in favor of the “democratic,” to question traditional
doctrinal certainties, and to demand reasons for those things formerly regarded
as sacred, the most important of which was the basis for their vocation to the
religious life. They became exposed to new anthropologies under the influence
of psychology, sociology, and other social sciences, acceptance of which many
sisters were naturally compliant under obedience — all this in spite of the
obviousness that such changes were not approved by Rome and threatened the
existence of their communities. In other words, the desired ressourcement of the council Fathers, rather than providing the guiding
atmosphere in which aggiornamento was
to occur, was ignored in favor of “updating.”
P ope Paul VI will be beatified Sunday at the Vatican. While he is perhaps best known for his decisive 1968 encyclical on the regulation of birth, Humanae Vitae , he will also be remembered as a man of extraordinary gifts who was burdened by the tumult the Church faced during his 15-year papacy. His election as Pope Paul VI in 1963 required of him to bring the Second Vatican Council to a conclusion and oversee its implementation. Having taken the name Paul to signify the Church’s mission to evangelize the whole world, he made nine overseas journeys, beginning with the Holy Land. Unhappily his pontificate was marked by a series of crises. Both heterodox and traditionalist Catholics considered him feeble and vacillating, though for differing reasons, and he was tormented to the point of once saying that “the smoke of Satan” had entered the Church. It was this phrase which caught my attention to the point of research for a book on the Church in the U.S. si...

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