If it is true that John XXIII controversially determined it was neither opportune nor wise to conclude the Council with the anathemas which usually follow Church councils, it is also true that the Councils of Trent and Vatican I (the latter had been interrupted in the last century and needed completion) were specifically cited and reaffirmed as the Church’s perennial and unalterable doctrine, and that nothing which followed from this Council could be interpreted as a rupture with the teachings of those councils.

Pope Paul VI’s Credo of the People of God (see below), which followed but a few years later, in 1968, is absolutely unambiguous and is the hermeneutical key to interpreting the documents of Vatican II. Especially after that Credo, which unambiguously reaffirmed the whole dogmatic structure of Catholicism from the beginning to today, none can attribute even the least shadow of heresy to the Magisterium without demonstrating culpable ignorance. That Credo is a firewall against Integrist schismatic excuses against the council and a line drawn in the sand for liberal dissidents.

Of course the liberals never forgave Pope Paul for that and immediately launched their counterattack (including the implicit threat of wholesale schism in some continents) which accounts for the genuine apostasy in many parts of the world since. Tradiionalist extremists, on the other hand, ignored the Pope and persisted in shifting doctrinal suspicion toward the council. The Credo, however, annihilates all such unjust criticism and dogmatically frames the Council in perfect congruity with Pope John’s opening address.

It is reported that when Pope Paul first declared that Credo, he asked all the bishops in attendance to sit down. He, alone, the Vicar of Christ, stood to proclaim and reaffirm the Church’s Tradition in the midst of the confusions afflicting the Church, the Body of Christ.

Yes, it is true that Pope John XXIII openly rebuked the joyless “prophets of doom,” who were too often unbalanced in their tractarian approach to the faith and the modern world, but this was in the interests of the balance of the Church’s kerygma. For if the Gospel certainly contains a “Repent or perish” message, it also contains “Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

It is precisely the task of the Church’s hierarchy to ensure that neither aspect of the Church’s proclamation is exaggerated at the expense of the other.

The Credo of the People of God

If the council was to speak to all men of good will and optimistically proclaim a new way that nations and peoples should view and relate to one another, it is only in the context of the exaggerated nationalisms and totalitarian regimes which tortured and executed millions in the course of one century that such astonishing optimism can be viewed. And it infuriated the Church’s enemies. That “old medieval anachronism,” the Church, was going to proclaim a new order of relations among men? Few expected such talk in such an hour! And it was a stroke of the genius of the Holy Spirit to pronounce on such optimistic hopeful things at just such a time, when the Soviet Union was exporting its atheistic opiate all over the globe and recently risking thermonuclear hell during the Cuban missile crisis.

The Communists would have preferred good old-fashioned anathemas, which would be easy enough for them to mock. What they did not expect was a new and curious competition by a Church already possessing a massive constituency in the fight for the very soul of the world.

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+ John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and a New World Order