“A true legacy of the Second Vatican Council is being fulfilled in the person and pontificate of Pope Francis.” And that, my friendly traditionalist Catholics, is your problem.

The rejection of the Novus Ordo and Vatican II.

Several recent articles from legitimate Catholic news sites, as well as a few of the fringe sites really reminded me of that fact.  It has been going on since Vatican II - the Remnant, descendant from the Wanderer offers documentation in that regard.  The subtle rejection of Vatican II is the thread running through the 'faithful' Catholic traditionalists.  The rejection of the Novus Ordo is what underlies the current rejection of Pope Francis and the bishops in communion with him.

It has been said progressives have rejected the hermeneutic of continuity, yet it is the traditionalist who promote the hermeneutic of rupture in their outright rejection of Vatican II, including the liturgical reforms, or the Novus Ordo, and most significantly, the documents which include Nostra aetate.  I won't spend time discussing this - others more knowledgeable can do that - but ordinary Catholics should be aware of what is going on with these people.  It has been like this since Paul VI.

A comment from Father Paulo Anto Pulikkan to Catholic News Agency reminded me of that:

“A true legacy of the Second Vatican Council is being fulfilled in the person and pontificate of Pope Francis."

As someone who routinely calls for justice and care for those who are poor and marginalized, the Pope and his plea for “a poor Church for the poor” is a concrete fulfillment of what the bishops of the Second Vatican Council asked for, Fr. Pulikkan said.

The underprivileged “was the theme of the council, but this has been recently very clearly stressed by Francis.” 

Fr. Pulikkan, director of the Chair for Christian studies at the University of Calicut in the Indian state of Kerala, was one of the speakers at a Dec. 9-11 conference in Rome on the protagonists of the Second Vatican Council as seen through the archives.

The conference was organized by the Pontifical Committee for Historic Sciences as well as the Pontifical Lateran University's Center for Research and Studies on the Second Vatican Council.

The council, he told CNA, “is the council for the poor,” which can be particularly seen in the pastoral constitution “Gaudium et Spes,” dedicated to the Church in the Modern World.

In the initial draft, “the concern for the poor was neglected,” he said noting that the same held true for the council's fourth session in 1965.

Despite the fact that the session took place right after the 1964 Eucharistic Congress in Bombay, which focused heavily on solidarity with the poor and was attended by many of the councils protagonists, concern for the poor was “totally neglected.” - CNA

How the Pope is following in the footsteps of his predecessors.

I'm not defending the Pope, as I said last week, he doesn't need me to do that.  Nevertheless, the papacy is one of the reason I stay Catholic.  The main reason I'm Catholic is my faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacraments, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, then Pope and the Magisterium.  It's not the particular pope, but the guarantee of the Petrine office.

That said, an article at NCRegister helps demonstrate - for me at least - how the Holy Father is faithfully following in the footsteps of his predecessors.

Safeguarding the environment has been mentioned to some degree in all recent social encyclicals, but successive popes have increasingly waded into the scientific minutiae of the effects of human activity on ecosystems.

1. The environment first took on a more prominent role when Blessed Paul VI warned in his 1971 apostolic letter Octogesima Adveniens of the “tragic consequence” of unchecked human activity and an “ill-considered exploitation of nature.” He later predicted an “ecological catastrophe” caused by the explosive growth of industrial civilization and stressed the urgent need for “a radical change in the conduct of humanity.”

2. Pope St. John Paul was the first pope to call for an ecological conversion and introduced the theme of human ecology. In his first encyclical,Redemptor Hominis, he warned that human beings frequently seem “to see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption.” He would then go on to address the issue in additional detail in his 1990 World Day of Peace Message, “Peace With God the Creator, Peace With All of Creation.”

3. Benedict XVI expanded further on ecology, introducing an ecology of peace and social ecology. “The book of nature is one and indivisible,” he wrote in his 2009 social encyclical Caritas in Veritate, adding that it encompasses the environment, life, sexuality, the family and social relations. “The deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence,” he said.

But most significantly, Benedict was the first pope to refer to climate change, mentioning it on seven occasions during his pontificate, the first time in2007. He also became the first pope to wade into the particulars of safeguarding the environment, trumpeting the “immense potential” of solar energy (installing it at the Vatican and signing a U.N. protocol), preserving water systems, “whose stability could be seriously jeopardized by climate change,” and implementing “appropriate policies for the management of forests.” - Pentin, NCRegister

Pentin loses me when he quotes Sirico of the Acton Institute. Yet this part of the article supports my notion, and therefore works for me.

I might be wrong of course.

Ed. note:  I already know what those who disagree with me want to say.  It goes something like this:

Thank you for revealing your dispositions. It's clear you have no clue what's happening in the Church, and that your arguments (such as they are) are ultramontanist papalotry.  I'm sure Pope Francis appreciates your blind (and dumb) loyalty.

 We love you family.

Yup.