"Vatican II was a new Pentecost ... ."
International Theological Commission of the Catholic Church
June 10, 2014
The Church had one Pentecost. One. The Church does not need new foundations, she is not a country in search of new constitutional orders. Enough is enough: 50 years of collapse of the sensus catholicus, collapse of Catholic life in all countries where the Church was firmly established in Europe and the Americas, near-disappearance of all Catholic communities across the Middle East (in this case, mostly through no fault of the hierarchy, but still indicating that speaking of a "new Pentecost" is a mockery), collapse of vocations and religious life, that is enough. The only communities holding up are those of some regions in Africa -- and precisely those that preserve the faith of the original missionaries and that reject dialogue with the wicked immoral spirit of the contemporary world -- as well as those tiny congregations around the world making their best to worship as the Church always did and teach what the Church always taught.
The delusion must end: Vatican II was not a new Pentecost. A renewal of the Church can only come from the "old" Pentecost, the first and only Pentecost, whose living word is Apostolic Tradition straight from the Lord -- "Paraclitus autem Spiritus Sanctus, quem mittet Pater in nomine meo, ille vos docebit omnia, et suggeret vobis omnia quæcumque dixero vobis." (Jn 14: 26: "the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.")
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[Note: This is not a dismissal, of course, of the whole document -- recalling the consultative and advisory nature of the commission. As every committee-based document of the past five decades, however, it is often confusing and unclear. In any event, there is one excerpt in particular that should be highlighted: "The magisterium and theology must work constantly to renew the presentation of the faith in different situations, confronting if necessary dominant notions of Christian truth with the actual truth of the Gospel, but it must be recalled that the experience of the Church shows that sometimes the truth of the faith has been conserved not by the efforts of theologians or the teaching of the majority of bishops but in the hearts of believers." (n. 119)]
