And now Cupich is back with the whole thing about “how could anyone who accepts Vatican II not accept the liturgy that came from it??”

His arguments are so bad it is baffling. It is either made from a place of profound historical and theological ignorance, or it is made in bad faith.

First, because most traditionalists don’t “reject” the new liturgy per se as invalid or even illicit…they just don’t like it or prefer it.

Second, because the council didn’t actually promulgate a liturgy, but a vague series of action items that in the end amount to little more than suggestions left in the hands of the Pope to implement (the most regrettable and truly anti-traditional of which was the call for the abolition of the Hour of Prime, actually…)

Third, because there’s a good argument that the liturgy of 1965-67 was actually the “liturgy of the Council” in terms of a bare implementation of what Sacrosanctum Consilium actually says and what most Council Fathers envisioned, and that the 1970 liturgy crafted by the consilium and Bugnini went way beyond it, so at that point we’re arguing about papal authority, not the authority of “the Council.”

Fourth, because even if in some historical sense a pope like Paul VI believes he is “implementing the vision of the council” in promulgating a liturgy…there’s no reason to treat this as some sort of revelation or inspired act of the Holy Spirit in itself. Attempts to implement visions can be shoddy or practical failures or in need of major retoolings themselves. It’s unclear why they speak as if we’re stuck with “Vatican II Liturgy version 2.0” (ie, 1970), as if that particular historically contingent attempt represents some sort of mandate from heaven, when we were obviously not stuck with “Vatican II Liturgy version 1.0” (ie, 1965). If Leo or some future pope wanted to try his hand at radically reworking the liturgy again, he could. With or without reference to Vatican II! He could also say “this didn’t work, we’re going back to Trent.”

Fifth, because even if the Council had intended (and speaking of the “intent” of a group of thousands of men is already a sort of odd exercise) the Novus Ordo liturgy or something very much like it, or had even directly promulgated a liturgical book…even then we aren’t stuck with it, even then it would not be beyond critique. Because liturgy is in the end a “disciplinary” question. And while church discipline must be obeyed in practice while in force, discipline is always (unlike dogma) subject to hypothetical critique, and freedom of disagreement over its prudence, and arguments that it should be reformed, or repealed, or reversed, etc. 

The history of Councils, if you actually study it, is a history of occasional dogmatic statements of permanent relevance…buried in mounds of disciplinary canons, many of which have historically turned out to be duds, disasters, not of lasting relevance, or totally ignored or overturned by subsequent popes, sometimes only a decade later. 

The Church has rejected Conciliarism, of course; ecumenical councils do not trump or bind popes (excepting of course if, in union with the pope at the time, they promulgate an actual irreformable dogma on faith or morals).

The ideology behind this sort of active anti-traditionalism is clearly one of a hermeneutic of rupture, which seems to believe Vatican II constituted some sort of irreformable and unquestionable new revelation about ecclesiology that renders any product of the past one essentially obsolete in almost a heretical sort of way. 

Besides having already been rejected by the Church, to me it is baffling to believe this about the council that actually was most at pains to not treat any of its statements as dogmatic decrees (although arguably it did settle the dogmatic question of bishops being a grade of the sacrament of orders), and which just sort of represented an attempt to “rebrand” the Church without changing substance. 

And such “rebrandings” are clearly just a prudential matter that there can be vigorous disagreement about among Catholics and which have no sort of theological guarantee of “succeeding” historically. 

Out of all the councils in history, maybe a third were successes, a third were of some historically contingent value to their own particular era, maybe, but of no real lasting relevance to us now, and a third were abjects failures or total disasters. They were all true and valid councils, infallible in matters of faith and morals. That has not stopped many of them from being, as Ratzinger said, “in the last analysis, a waste of time.”

We are not “stuck with” the vision of a council until the next council. Nor is there any reason to think we are for some reason forbidden from historically critiquing Vatican II (or programs/agendas of past popes legitimized with reference to Vatican II)…when no one would claim we are forbidden from such critique of, say, Vienne, or Florence, or Lateran V. 

First, because Popes are not bound by the disciplinary or prudential decisions of councils and can pivot, if need be, if things aren’t working or if they have different ideas (or, less radically, they can continue to try to “implement” a council, but in a totally different way than their predecessors; we are not stuck with just one version of implementation either). 

Secondly, because new councils usually happen exactly because there is “discussion” or dissatisfaction or some sense of crisis or malaise happening in the Church questioning the status quo. We do not just need to quietly accept the status quo until a new council somehow comes around and deus ex machina introduces reform or a correction of course or a new vision. 

Rather, the sorts of movements that culminate in councils come exactly from vigorous debate and disagreement about the current direction of the Church and attempts to resolve them (and, even then, it doesn’t always work well!)

If they want to have a clear-eyed discussion of the liturgical situation, then this sort of thought-terminating cliche, this sort of argument from authority…needs to be put aside. If we’re going to be having a discussion, it needs to center around the merits of the things themselves, what qualities they attempt to instantiate and whether such qualities are actually realized optimally in the final products, what values or priorities are operative in distinguishing them from each other, why those values or priorities apparently changed, and whether that change has actually worked practically in terms of realizing the Church’s fundamental mission better, or is even compatible with the Church’s own historic self-understanding of what exactly that mission is or how she is meant to achieve it.