Cardinal- no going back on the Second Vatican Council

The decisions of the Second Vatican Council regarding liturgy, ecumenism, lay involvement and human rights are irreversible. This was the view of Cardinal Walter Kasper as the main speaker at the Styrian Pastoral Week in the Austrian town of Seggauberg. Although in the post-conciliar era, there was "lots of daylight and shadow", a dynamic has been triggered that cannot and should not be undone. This both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have made abundantly clear, said the cardinal emeritus and long-time President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

Kasper said that, unlike in the past, at the last council no formal doctrinal decisions were made. This explains also their main intention: There were no heresies for debate, rather Pope John XXIII wanted to carry the deposit of faith into the contemporary world today. It was for the Pope "not a simple adaptation, but the update of the inalienable content of the Christian faith," said Kasper. Cardinal Kasper said that one "should not see the council as a myth" that had happened once. The reception was a process in the Holy Spirit. Many questions such as those relating to justice and to suffering and death are ultimately more relevant than internal church problems. To answer this, knowledge about the faith is needed. Cardinal Kasper said, therefore a "theocentric revolution" in theology and preaching is necessary


Cathcon- as if the Church was not theocentric before the Council. There was a heresy that still remains un-condemned by a Council of the Church. Its name is modernism, and, as the Cardinal well knows was around in the early 1960s waiting its opportunity to strike. And strike it did.  But given the number attending church in Europe today, it has dug its own grave.

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