The second of two perspectives ...

... on Vatican 2.

The article I linked earlier today criticizes reformers misinterpretations in the top and then criticizes traditionalists misinterpretations in its second half.

It features this brilliant observation about traditionalist Catholicism:

Vatican II offered such a positive exposition, and as a result struck a significant blow against the growing tendency of Catholics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to live their Faith prescriptively (obeying rules and fulfilling duties) rather than evangelistically (living the Gospel out of gratitude and love). The proof that this was a huge tendency, if any proof is necessary, can be found in what happened to Catholic life after the rules were relaxed, and after the consequences of breaking them were de-emphasized.

That is absolutely correct. Traditionalist Catholics tend to talk as if all we have to do is bring back the rules and everything will be okay but the very crisis they point to tells us what was wrong with the rules. And what is most powerful about it is that it demolishes the traditionalist argument right at the point where people who hold it think it is strongest.

Traditionalists often point at the directionless mess that a lot of Catholics found themselves in during the the late 1960s and early 1970s as proof that the reforms were a mistake. But the sheer speed with which the collapse set in tells us just how empty and rote mainstream Catholicism had become at that point. That people abandoned the rules so readily showed just how meaningless they had become. They had become like taboos.

As Alasdair MacIntyre argues, taboos were moral prohibitions that were enforced even though no one really understood why anymore. When a reforming Hawaiian King simply suppressed the taboos, the whole system collapsed over night because no one could give a coherent and meaningful account of how these things amounted to a moral world view. All they could do was list a bunch of rules and suggest that these rules had to be obeyed or the consequences would be very scary. The same was true of many of the rules that governed Catholic life in the 19th and early 20th century. What all this had to do with loving God or loving your neighbour as yourself, they had no clue about.